Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup

Re:Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup by Scoundreller on Thursday September 03, 2020 @11:28AM (#24364967)

> refrigeration grade vacuum pump needed here

My understanding is that some of the DIY units had a built-in vacuum pump for this step.

Edit: never mind, I think I’m making stuff up in my head. But I could see it being a feature in the future.

What makes a vacuum unit “refrigeration grade”? Other than recovering what you’re vacuuming if you’re doing maintenance instead of a first install?

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Re:Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup by pwg on Thursday September 03, 2020 @11:42AM (#24365118)

Generally what makes it 'refrigeration grade' is the level of vacuum down to which it can pull.

Here are some examples of refrigeration vacuum pumps:

https://www.grainger.com/search/hvac-and-refrigeration/air-c...

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Re:Home Office Projects Series: Air conditioner setup by jcrawfordor on Thursday September 03, 2020 @12:23PM (#24365634)

Rated to pull high vacuum, <500 micron at the most. You can get such pumps very cheaply, the issue is usually the volume on them - when I tried using a very cheap ($60) one it took a very long time and kept going into thermal protect on the way down, and that was with a small system. Refrigeration techs use vacuum pumps that both move a large volume and can do very high vacuum and that's pretty expensive, although not insanely so - I see one from a popular HVAC brand for $500.

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