Picked up 2 1 ton units.. What to do!?!
 

Well I bought 2 big rig apu's both can with 1 ton ac units with resistence heating. One is a r22 unit that's been retrofitted with r4 something I don't remember what it is now And the other is a r134a unit. Both are 120v units. Ill get some photos tonight. I got the r22 unit running last night seems to run well so far. The r134a unit is missing the condensor (I think as it's missing the hot side) I always get them mixed up! Just curious as what to make with them? I already have a heat pump water heater. Thought about making a mini split system for my bedroom that way I can keep that room hot/cold when needed and not run the whole house all the time

Thoughts??

The r-22 retrofit is probably Dupont MO99 "isceon". That seems to be what the pro's are replacing with lately. Not quite as well performing as R22 or propane, it's a cocktail of the same stuff that's in r410 plus some more gases. All the new "acceptable, industry standard" refrigerants are pretty much made of the "magic 5" gases so you have to have a license to purchase them. I believe many of the 400-series refrigerants are a fad, a band-aid for now. They will be replaced shortly.

It's ASHRAE number is R-438a. And it's expensive (recycled r-22 is cheaper). It's supposed to be the closest thing to real r-22 so far. Only it has a 10 degree glide (doh).

If the r-22 retrofit is whole, I would leave it how it is and figure out how to blow air where you want it. The R-134a one is hackable, since you can get refrigerant anywhere.

Hooked up my gauges to the r22 unit and its reading way low on the pressures low side was at 30psi. I'm going to call a few local places to see if they can recover the refrigerant for me and I'll just replace with r290 :) then ill have to decide what I want to use it for

The most common R22 replacement is R407c.

I took pictures yesterday but i forgot to put them on photobucket so hopefully ill get thr done today. So I'm leaning towards a heat pump for my garage. It's about 20x20 or for my bed room.

so i dug these guys out today.

the r22 system says it was replaced with 417a with alkylbenzene oil. i did run it on 290 a little but i wasnt sure if the oil was on for 290 so i stopped but it does seem to run ok.
this is a link to the compressor info link

the other unit is not complete its missing the condenser but it is a r134a compressor
this is the info on this compressor but i have not run it yet because its missing some parts haha link

still trying to decide what to do with this two units. can the 134a compressor run on 290? obviously the cap tube/txv would have to be changed but would the oil?

thought about turning the r22 unit into a heat pump and putting it in my bed room as a large window shaker but im thinking it might be better for the garage.

So I need some help finding some fans for the evacuation and condensers. The ones on the units are 24v and have a lot of complicated wiring that I can figure out. I'd like to find some that are 120v and relatively efficient. They are one ton units so a general rule is 400 cfm per ton of I remember correctly. Atleast for the evap but does that hold true for the condenser?

ok another update. ive manage to get all of the fans working. 2 run on 120v and the other one runs on 24vdc.

but i have a question that i came up with when i was looking for fans. (didnt find any good cheap ones) i have an old 10seer 2.5 ton condenser that i had thought about running one of the 1 ton units with it but with out a condenser fan? basically the idea was to just have the large surface area to dispers the hot or cold?

stupid idea? just trying to thing outside the box..

It will work if there is enough surface area and natural convection. It will work even better if the fan was slowly moving. To experiment with the airflow, grab a 3 dollar light dimmer from your favorite home improvement store and wire it to the fan like it is a light to be dimmed. If you wanted to be savvy, a thermostat could be rigged in the same spot to do the deed.

This approach would only work in cooling mode. Your sweet spot would exist below a certain condenser temp where fan power to cool the condenser is less than the added load on the compressor. Sort of the opposite of a "low ambient" control for walk-in coolers.

In heating mode, below a certain temperature you want to run the fan all the time. If the outdoor hx is large, you may get down in the 30's before the thing starts making frost. A TXV really helps in these conditions.

Thanks Jeff that's kind of what I had figured and I probably won't end up going that route. At least not yet :)

Anyway I'm starting to get a parts list together. I'm looking at this txv. As I Believe it has the check valve built in? Everything else is what it should be what I need as its a 12kbtu and I plan to run propane.

Surplus City Liquidators
(Sorry my phone crashes when I hit the link button)

Surplus City Liquidators
And this for the reversing valve.

So I have two comressors and two evaporator and one condenser that are 12-14kbtu and one 2.5 ton condenser and one 2.5 ton evap.

I'm think just for learning purposes I'll stick with all 1 ton parts for now.. Maybe at some point I'll do some kinda two stage thing with both compressors and the 2.5 ton stuff.

I've been following Memphis and his multiple builds and have learned a lot from those.