When do I use air conditioning?
Air conditioning isn’t just great for those hot summer days; it’s a handy tool for demisting windows during the winter months too, which is why it’s so important to have it working all throughout the year. So it is about comfort but also about safety and visibility on a rainy day or on cold mornings.
Re-Gas and servicing
It is recommended that air conditioning systems are serviced every 2 years with gas and lubricant, in order to maintain running to specs. A/C maintenance is not part of the vehicle regular service and so it can often be missed. If your car is more than 2 years old it is more than likely due a recharge.
We specialise in servicing and maintaining both new and old types of A/C systems including
R134a –Re-gas or service
HFO-1234yf or R1234yf- Re-gas or service
Our Air-conditioning Service consists of:
- System control and temperature check.
- Recover refrigerant.
- Vacuum system and leak test.
- Replace oil and add ultraviolet dye.
- Recharge system and Test
Our fully trained technicians will take a temperature reading from your air conditioning system, remove all the old refrigerant gas, oil and dye. They then clean the whole system and remove any moisture within. Once the system has been thoroughly cleaned and vacuumed our technicians will inject new oil, dye and refrigerant gas and take a temperature reading again to ensure that the Re-Gas has made a difference to the cold air temperature. This process will ensure that your air conditioning system is working to its full potential.
Leak Detection
We will never just re-gas an empty system without leak testing it first.
If your A/C system has a leak we will diagnose and advise on the repair. If you don’t want us to carry on after this then all you pay is a diagnostic fee.
We test your A/C system for leaks using the following:
- Pressure test using oxygen free nitrogen
- Vacuum test
- Ultra Violet dye leak detection
We can test and rectify any problem on your a/c system and cover 98% of the cars on the roads.
Request An Estimate for Car Air Conditioning Servicing or Re-Gas!
History of Air Conditioning Systems in Cars
A/C systems are present nowadays on most vehicles as standard equipment from the factory. The first company to install an air conditioning system in a car was in the USA in 1933 when they have equipped it for limousines and luxury cars. In 1939 Packard became an automobile manufacturer to offer air conditioning on its cars and the system was called weather conditioner.
Over the years the air conditioning known now had been called many different ways and has seen many improvements in the way it operates resulting in a system that is effective in controlling vehicle interior temperature.
Functionality
In the refrigeration cycle, heat is transported from a colder location to a hotter area. As heat would naturally flow in the opposite way, mechanical effort is required to achieve this. A refrigerator is an example of such a system, as it transports the heat out of the interior and into its environment. The refrigerant gas is used as the medium which absorbs and removes heat from the space to be cooled and subsequently ejects that heat elsewhere.
Circulating refrigerant vapours enters the compressor, where their pressure and temperature are increased. The hot, compressed refrigerant gas vapour is at a temperature and pressure at which it can be condensed and is routed through a condenser. Here it is cooled by air blown over the condenser surface and condensed into a liquid. This way circulating refrigerant removes heat from the system and the heat is carried away by air.
Type of gas used in car Air Conditioning Systems
R134a has been used in the automotive industry for over 20 years but it started to be replaced in 2013.
It is considered that R134a is 1430 times more destructive to the atmosphere than CO2, therefore replacement of this gas was imminent and probably required for a long time.
The new laws from 2011 required all newly designed cars and vans built for the EU and equipped with air conditioning (AC) to use a refrigerant gas with a global warming potential (GWP) of 150 or lower. The R134a gas has GWP OF 1430, therefore a new gas was introduced.
New vehicles are required by law to use greener refrigerant HFO-1234yf or R1234yf.
A new refrigerant was therefore found with a GWP coefficient of just 4 that is ticking the box of being a greener air conditioning gas and has been implemented in use of a car from 2013 and from 2015 all manufactures are required to use this type of gas, which it has the downside if being more expensive.