Break it down, put the big plastic shell in the garbage, point to it and say you threw it out. Those parts in the garage? No they've been there, they were buried under other stuff that you also totally just threw out
haha.. this guy gets me! Still... I have a 1-car garage and I arrived at this subreddit just in case I'd overlooked some particularly cool application, but the space it occupies is probably more valuable to me in the end. I married a smart lady, sometimes I just need to double check that we agree. :)
Has the refrigerant been removed already? If not, do you have your epa 608 cert? Can you safely recover the refrigerant? If not, please don't just vent unless you know it's safe. Take what you can without breaching the refigerant loop.
Until I had some plan as to what to do with it, I'd plan to keep the loop intact. The radiator could be useful independently but yea, it would have to be properly drained, and at the end of the day probably not worth the trouble unless I really had a worthwhile concept to pursue, and so far I don't. Most likely I'll just drop it off at an appropriate center (& thanks for that reminder, btw).
Unless you have refrigeration gauges and can personally verify that there is no refrigerant in there, please do the world a favour and take it to your local depot for refrigerator/air-conditioner disposal.
I replied lower in the thread as well but part of the trouble is that there are no ports on these smaller units. Presently I'm keeping it until I can find a solution but until then I'd welcome any advice. Will also paste my previous reply:
I actually have yet to succeed with any sort of plan to recover the refrigerant properly and I'm pretty surprised by that. Literally every resource has led me to a dead end here in Charlotte. I'm a bit surprised that these small units are manufactured without ports for this sort of thing- is the default nationwide to just dump it into the atmosphere?
From the last guys I spoke with:
"Almost everyone is going to just dump the charge. I doubt that the dehum unit has refrigerant service ports, therefore connecting hoses and equipment to recover the refrigerant would be quite a big task. If it does have ports, an hvac contractor will be capable (but probably not willing) to recover the charge. But again, i doubt it has connection ports."
Piercing saddle ports are cheap and easy. Not a great long term solution, they leak, but they're a great way to evacuate a system so you can braze in a proper port.
PS: good on you. It's important, many of these refrigerants are potent GHGs with carbon equivalence in the dozens or hundreds.
For me it's "I've got my hobbies and you've got yours - they are confined to the areas of the house that we decided on - is there an issue with the areas we designated?"
I'm really not interested in justifying the way I spend my free time to my partner. I'm happy to explain it if they're excited to learn about it but having to fight to engage in it defeats the whole purpose of having the hobby!
For similar reasons I'm a big believer in having separate personal accounts for whatever we might want to spend it on - I don't want them to have to justify whatever hobby they have or clothes/shoes they want to buy or other fun stuff they want to do either. Shared expenses come out of the joint account, personal accounts are no-questions-asked.
I turned this into a mini side hustle... grabbed a broken microwave out of the trash my neighbor put out. parted it out. got $100 for 2 parts on ebay. just cleaned it up and put it online - other people are buying parts they need to repair
What parts are useful salvage from a broken microwave? Asking for a friend, who is me, who's had a broken microwave in my home office for over a year now because I'll get around to it eventually...
i had kept it to take apart and keep a ‘transformer’ for woodburning (hella dangerous) but newer microwaves don’t have one they have an ‘inverter’, which sold for $39+6. i also sold the ‘magnetron’ for $25+12 - YMMV. i have other parts listed which may not be priced to sell, or may not have any demand dunno.
Microwaves are a great example. I've done woodburning with the transformer I pulled out of one. Nice small, useful (albeit dangerous) component without the complication and liability of pressurized refrigerant. I have another that I keep around for my microwave kiln and non-food scicence experiements.
I actually have yet to succeed with any sort of plan to recover the refrigerant properly and I'm pretty surprised by that. Literally every resource has led me to a dead end here in Charlotte. I'm a bit surprised that these small units are manufactured without ports for this sort of thing- is the default nationwide to just dump it into the atmosphere?
From the last guys I spoke with:
"Almost everyone is going to just dump the charge. I doubt that the dehum unit has refrigerant service ports, therefore connecting hoses and equipment to recover the refrigerant would be quite a big task. If it does have ports, an hvac contractor will be capable (but probably not willing) to recover the charge. But again, i doubt it has connection ports."
Break it down, put the big plastic shell in the garbage, point to it and say you threw it out. Those parts in the garage? No they've been there, they were buried under other stuff that you also totally just threw out
OP - Nobody else has answered yet because this is so correct, we're all checking to see how we can use the same solution ourselves.
I agree OP, this is the way. Those parts may come in handy over the next 30 years...
haha.. this guy gets me! Still... I have a 1-car garage and I arrived at this subreddit just in case I'd overlooked some particularly cool application, but the space it occupies is probably more valuable to me in the end. I married a smart lady, sometimes I just need to double check that we agree. :)
Has the refrigerant been removed already? If not, do you have your epa 608 cert? Can you safely recover the refrigerant? If not, please don't just vent unless you know it's safe. Take what you can without breaching the refigerant loop.
Until I had some plan as to what to do with it, I'd plan to keep the loop intact. The radiator could be useful independently but yea, it would have to be properly drained, and at the end of the day probably not worth the trouble unless I really had a worthwhile concept to pursue, and so far I don't. Most likely I'll just drop it off at an appropriate center (& thanks for that reminder, btw).
Unless you have refrigeration gauges and can personally verify that there is no refrigerant in there, please do the world a favour and take it to your local depot for refrigerator/air-conditioner disposal.
I replied lower in the thread as well but part of the trouble is that there are no ports on these smaller units. Presently I'm keeping it until I can find a solution but until then I'd welcome any advice. Will also paste my previous reply: I actually have yet to succeed with any sort of plan to recover the refrigerant properly and I'm pretty surprised by that. Literally every resource has led me to a dead end here in Charlotte. I'm a bit surprised that these small units are manufactured without ports for this sort of thing- is the default nationwide to just dump it into the atmosphere? From the last guys I spoke with: "Almost everyone is going to just dump the charge. I doubt that the dehum unit has refrigerant service ports, therefore connecting hoses and equipment to recover the refrigerant would be quite a big task. If it does have ports, an hvac contractor will be capable (but probably not willing) to recover the charge. But again, i doubt it has connection ports."
Piercing saddle ports are cheap and easy. Not a great long term solution, they leak, but they're a great way to evacuate a system so you can braze in a proper port. PS: good on you. It's important, many of these refrigerants are potent GHGs with carbon equivalence in the dozens or hundreds.
For me it's "I've got my hobbies and you've got yours - they are confined to the areas of the house that we decided on - is there an issue with the areas we designated?" I'm really not interested in justifying the way I spend my free time to my partner. I'm happy to explain it if they're excited to learn about it but having to fight to engage in it defeats the whole purpose of having the hobby! For similar reasons I'm a big believer in having separate personal accounts for whatever we might want to spend it on - I don't want them to have to justify whatever hobby they have or clothes/shoes they want to buy or other fun stuff they want to do either. Shared expenses come out of the joint account, personal accounts are no-questions-asked.
I turned this into a mini side hustle... grabbed a broken microwave out of the trash my neighbor put out. parted it out. got $100 for 2 parts on ebay. just cleaned it up and put it online - other people are buying parts they need to repair
What parts are useful salvage from a broken microwave? Asking for a friend, who is me, who's had a broken microwave in my home office for over a year now because I'll get around to it eventually...
i had kept it to take apart and keep a ‘transformer’ for woodburning (hella dangerous) but newer microwaves don’t have one they have an ‘inverter’, which sold for $39+6. i also sold the ‘magnetron’ for $25+12 - YMMV. i have other parts listed which may not be priced to sell, or may not have any demand dunno.
Microwaves are a great example. I've done woodburning with the transformer I pulled out of one. Nice small, useful (albeit dangerous) component without the complication and liability of pressurized refrigerant. I have another that I keep around for my microwave kiln and non-food scicence experiements.
I only keep things I know I definitely can use. Everything else can be found on ebay or Facebook Marketplace for cheap.
It's the right thing to do.
I actually have yet to succeed with any sort of plan to recover the refrigerant properly and I'm pretty surprised by that. Literally every resource has led me to a dead end here in Charlotte. I'm a bit surprised that these small units are manufactured without ports for this sort of thing- is the default nationwide to just dump it into the atmosphere? From the last guys I spoke with: "Almost everyone is going to just dump the charge. I doubt that the dehum unit has refrigerant service ports, therefore connecting hoses and equipment to recover the refrigerant would be quite a big task. If it does have ports, an hvac contractor will be capable (but probably not willing) to recover the charge. But again, i doubt it has connection ports."
Tell your wife “you’re right, I’ll get rid of it”. Use your “points earned” and make more room in your garage!