I bought a condo and when I moved in the AC wasn't putting out cold air (maybe 5 F below room temp). I had a home warranty and they came out and put some freon in it and it worked all summer. Now again this year the AC is not putting out cold air. My warranty is about to expire but had them come out again before it did. I had him look for a leak and he found one at the evaporator coil with a electronic freon detector. He put 1.5 lbs of freon in the AC and it is working again. He didn't really look closely at the coil or find the exact spot of the leak just waved the detector around the coil and it went off.
He states that my warranty company is pretty good about replacing the coil when they say it is bad. I am wondering if I should get them to replace the coil, or try and settle with them for a payment. I am worried that they will replace the coil and cause some other problem with the AC or condenser or not fix the leak and at that point I will be no longer covered by the home warranty. Additionally the unit is 13 years old and the condenser looks like its been through some hard times.
Other things:
Coil replacement will probably cost me 250$ as the warranty doesn't cover freon recovery.
I will likely be moving in 3-4 years and selling the place, so I need a working HVAC but installing a new high efficiency system is probably not a great idea cause I won't recoup the costs when it does sell.
The condenser is on the roof so that adds 1k to the unit replacement, rough quotes I got for a new unit where 5-8k.
Right now I am leaning towards trying to get a check from the home warranty people and just topping it off with freon every year. ( I could get my epa cert for 25 bucks and buy a 30lb r22 tank for 330$ and have a tech install it yearly for 75$) I'm hoping they would give me 600-800$. Anyone have any advice on this? I don't want to throw 5k at this since I am going to have to sell the place in 3-4 years.
TLDR:
--AC is leaking freon; I have a home warranty
--Tech diagnosed evaporator coil leak (he wasn't thorough when making the diagnosis though)
--Selling the place in 3-4 years
--Try and get the home warranty to replace the coil or get a settlement and just keep recharging the AC or replace the whole unit.
