Expensive training?
24 May 2013 
By Glenn Cutter
As an industry we complain about our skills and knowledge not being taken seriously and about the likes of the Citizens Advice Bureau and the OFT ‘unfairly’ targeting garages. How can we expect to be taken seriously when we can’t even get our people appropriately trained and qualified after seven years? The irony is that training saves you money, time and hassle.
The kit was demonstrated and instructions on use provided, it was then left with the garage and I eagerly awaited a phone call. It took the garage all of 15 minutes to hook up the OFN kit, pressurise the system safely, trace the leak to a pin hole in the rear evaporator supply line and get a new one ordered! Had the garage had their own kit, the previous day would have been spent doing other work to earn the garage owner money and money would not have been wasted using R134a in a vehicle with a leak – not only costly but also illegal. The cost would have been even greater had this been a newer vehicle filled with HFO 1234yf; the current price of this gas is in excess of £125 per kilo (so no wonder they are selling it in 5kg cylinders).
Current F-Gas regulations require all personnel working on air con systems where they are ‘gas handling’ to have their own individual DEFRA- approved qualification – it is not acceptable to be working under supervision. This is due to the ‘global warming potential’ of R134a and its destructive nature towards our atmosphere. On all Mill Autoquip approved training courses, technicians are shown best practice for gas transfer and recovery, including the recovery of gas in the connecting lines – in some machines this can be up to 50 grams which is ‘lost’ when the machine is disconnected – if the correct procedure is not observed. With R134a, this is a bad situation from an environmental point of view, though not financially disastrous. HFO 1234yf is some 1,500 times less destructive to the atmosphere than R134a but it is also 10 times more expensive, so that little hiss of gas escaping each time you disconnect could be costing you more than a tenner.
Recently customers have been talking to us about Mercedes refusing to use the new refrigerant due to it being ‘highly flammable’ and ‘dangerous’ to use [Daimler AG, parent of Mercedes-Benz issued a press release to this effect on Sep. 25th 2012 – Ed.] It seems there is a little truth in this rumour as the Honeywell data sheet states that HFO 1234yf is classed as mildly flammable but different reports all state different results and findings for the Mercedes test results, with some suggesting that the tests were not entirely fair.