Air Conditioning - Freon Leaking problem with New Carrier

I just have a local A/C company installed a new 5 tons Carrier A/C unit last year. My house is 7 years old with no A/C at time of purchase, in San Diego area. The 2 pipes were just capped with nylon caps at time of installing the unit therefore the A/C guy said that the pipes did not pressure tests. The pipes are 1/2 inch and 1/4 inch. After 6 months of running good the system ran out of Freon, the A/C guy came back putting in more Freon. He told me that my 80 feet copper pipes might have leak so he had put some leak stopping stuff in the Freon.

But 6 months later, the system ran out of Freon again. I asked he come to fix the problem. He said I have leak in my pipes and could not show me where is the leak and he did not use dye or anything to test for leak. I told him that it is nonsense if it has a leak in the pipes which could empty the lines in just 1 or 2 days because the high pressure of the freon. I claimed that the A/C unit does not hold freon so he came and detached the unit from the pipes and pressurized the unit with air while it not running and it hold the pressure. So again he said the copper lines have problem but he insisted not to test the lines because it is my problem.

He asked me to install new pipes with 7/8 and 3/8 pipes and he will charge me that about $3000 or more. It sounds to me as something is not right because different pipes. What can I do now to make sure that he is not taking advantage on me? Thank you for any comment.

I doubt you have a system which uses "Freon". As far as I know, Carrier only sells systems which use R-410a (Puron).

The lines should have been tested at the time of installation.
He should not have used any kind of "leak stopping stuff". By doing so, he may have voided your warranty on the equipment.

It sounds like you bought based on the cheapest price. If so, you got what you paid for. Your only recourse may be thru the legal system. You could try contacting Carrier but I doubt your installer is going to be an authorized Carrier contractor.

Thank you for fast response. My Carrier model is 24APA5 (24APA536A300). Its product link is here http://www.residential.carrier.com/products/acheatpumps/ac/performance.shtml.

You are right it is using Puron. He did not test the lines at installation same as now. What should I do? Thank you very much for any suggestion.

As per Mfr manual, the line-sets needed here are 3/8 (liquid line) and 3/4, 7/8 or 1-1/8 inches O.D., depending on the total line length.

How come you had 1/4 and 1/2 inch lines here?
They would be tremendously restrictive to the refrigerant flow of your system. It is a wonder that all this time you got any decent cooling at all (maybe it was somewhat cool where you live these previous months)...you could have ruined that compressor.

As pflor asked...How come you had 1/4 and 1/2 inch lines here?

For a 5 ton system? That size linest was frequently used in old r-22 systems of 1.5 perhaps 2 ton capacity.

Yeah Jim!
Those sizes are crazy for a 5-ton baby!

What was the tech thinking?

Wow, I completely missed the line & unit sizes. Sounds like a job by the infamous G.T.M.& R. (Get The Money & Run) Air Conditioning Inc.

Pflor, you are being mighty generous in calling the installer a "tech". I think the term "hack" might be a better label.

tnguyen875: Leak or no leak this system will never work anywhere near right, if at all. Serious damage has probably already been done to the compressor. Most likely your only recourse will be thru the legal system.