Freon recovery on the cheap homemade Air conditioning recovery machine

Cheaper refrigerant recovery unit: Put the recovery tank in a bucket of ice. (No compressor is needed.) Connect to manifolds, and open H and L valves. The refrigerant will condense inside the tank, leaving no liquid refrigerant in the HVAC system and only a trace pressure of gaseous refrigerant in the lines. It's not perfect, but it will recover 99% of the refrigerant. Caveat: If there is a check valve on the tank, that will have to be disabled. On my recovery tank, there's no check valve. Bonus: It's impossible to over-pressurize the recovery tank.

I'm a smalltime mobile mechanic, I have a snap-on KoolKare Plus machine I bought when I had my shop. Now that I've scaled back my work, and the cost of refrigerant going nuts (at least $10.00 a pound) I don't do much ac work now, so I'm selling my machine. What little ac work I do now this setup will do the trick, I'm gonna add a scale to the setup. A customer replaced his house ac unit and gave me the old one... didn't know what to do with the compressor, now I do. Thanks for the video. Also too, the scale, fittings, hoses and stuff will cost less than the new filter you can only purchase from snap-on. So when I sell my machine, I'll let the buyer change the filter for $160.00, I'll make this thing, and have a couple bucks left over to play with.

That was AWESOME. I'm going to build the same setup! Thanks for a great video.

Thank you for doing your part and keep the glove clean.

This was awesome, I'd love to see a bit more on what you ended up doing for this little system! Like you say, much better than the average home gamer solution!

it certainly would be nice to see the actual connectors/hoses you used to make this setup. Thanks for sharing this.

I like this dude, this is what we all look like at home. We just figuring out as we go along. this was real cool to watch. I don't hit the red button much but, subscribed

I did the same thing with a freezer compressor but used an old propane tank without the internal float and valve. Been an auto tech for 40 years and have thrown away tons of spent R134a cylinders not knowing about being able to mod the valve so it could be used to recover. What a great tip! Also, putting your recovery cylinder in the freezer helps.

YoutTube hero dude! YouTube needs to give you a medal of honor! I wondered how I could build something to not waste all my refridgerant when I work on an AC system. Short of buying a multi thousand dollar recovery machine. Thanks!

When I make my home made vacuum pump out of an old window AC unit, I reused the control panel switch. Yes, it also works super fast.

Nice, good on you man. Don't even bother w/ any of them haters talkin' down on what you did here.. They typically have an intelligence deficiency or a defective ego. Either way you can't win. In the process of building my own rig but I'm just gathering knowledge right now. Got some good ideas from your video tho. -big thanks!

I knew there was a better way : ) i work on a lot of ac systems for ppl who can't afford to go to the stealerships

Hello from the future, this is even more relevant in 2022 hyperinflation era than ever before.

Cool video sir.

Need a step by step on building this, detailed video of hoses, parts needed. Enjoy how it works but would like to attempt assembling one, thanks 👍🏼

I built a recovery machine out of an old reciprocating compressor from a dehumidifier. It is super fast. It would definitely over pressurise my refrigerant tank if I let it. On reciprocating compressors the casing is the low pressure side and on rotary compressors the casing is the high pressure side. I lose a lot less refrigerant because of that.

Easy temperature / pressure check will tell if there is contamination in the recovery tank when compared to a PT chart for that refrigerant type.

Pretty ingenious. Only thing I'd have done differently (besides adding valves...and a cart to mount it on) would be to use a vacuum pump to evacuate the storage cylinder first. When it was opened to modify the valve it would've been contaminated with air, which you will then turn around and contaminate your AC system with once you put it back in. Unless you just plan on giving the tank to your local hazardous waste disposal collection center.

Very very good

Was thinking can do something like this, also the potential to use as a vacuum and a compressor. Anyways, after doing the Prius AC Compressor with my HVAC man who has all the kit, seemed to me the cheap locally Autozone sourced ND14 equivalent I used instead of ND11 was what was the most nasty of the chemicals in the system. Thanks for sharing.