Refrigerant Line Sets: Choose Wisely
As a New Jersey HVAC supplier for over 30 years, E.P. Homiek has sold countless line sets to our contractors, and we’ve heard plenty of stories of compressor burnouts, poor system performance, and arguments with manufacturers over warranties.
Recently, we spoke with a manufacturer that ran into a dispute over compressor warranties in a large building in Hoboken, NJ. Sixty-four new split systems had been installed, with all compressors and condensers installed on the roof and evaporators installed on floors 2-7. Within a relatively short time, the units on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors were performing poorly, mostly due to undersized line sets or system overcharging, and there were a large number of compressor failures. It turned out that the HVAC contractor had installed identically-sized line sets for each unit in the building, ignoring that the distances on the lower floors were much greater than those on floors 5, 6 and 7.
Understanding refrigerant piping and how refrigerant and oil migrate through a system are crucial when sizing and connecting split systems and can often help technicians spot issues in existing systems. Each manufacturer has piping design guidelines, charts, and installation instructions that are readily available online, and many manufacturers can help HVAC contractors design line sets or can provide factory piping design literature. Liquid lines and suction lines have specific criteria for size and distance, and capacity loss should be kept at 3% or less. This information can be found on charts showing approximate percentages of cooling capacity loss for different size systems and different equivalent line lengths.
About E.P. Homiek
E.P. Homiek Sheet Metal Fabrication & HVAC Supply, with two convenient locations in Lakewood, NJ and Union, NJ, provides one- to two-day turnaround on all residential and light commercial ductwork, as well as one- to two-hour emergency fabrication service, rapid delivery, and competitive prices. HVAC parts, supplies, and equipment lines include Goodman, Honeywell, Bryant, Bradford White, Crown Boiler, Daikin, Weil-McLain, Sea Breeze, Generac, Fantech, ZM, A.O. Smith, Hart & Cooley, Malco, Mueller, and many more.
