The oldest AC system I’ve personally worked on was 38 years old. It was still cooling the house. The homeowner had no idea R-22 refrigerant had been phased out years earlier — they just knew it worked, and they didn’t want to spend money on something that wasn’t broken.
I respect that. And I told them the truth, which is what I’m going to tell you here.
R-22 Isn’t Illegal to Own or Operate
First, let’s clear something up. A lot of homeowners in older Garland and Mesquite neighborhoods have heard that R-22 is “banned” and assumed that means their system needs to go. That’s not quite right.
R-22 refrigerant was phased out of production in the US as of January 2020. But if you already have a system running R-22, you can legally keep running it. Technicians can still service it using reclaimed or recovered R-22 — it’s just more expensive than it used to be because the supply is limited and shrinking every year.
So repairing an R-22 system is a real option. These older units were built well. Solid equipment, heavy components, none of the cost-cutting you see in some newer gear. If a capacitor goes bad or a contactor needs replacing, fixing it makes sense.
But Here’s What’s Actually Eating Your Money
Where older R-22 systems lose the argument isn’t reliability — it’s efficiency. A system from the late 1980s or 1990s is running at 8 to 10 SEER, sometimes lower. Modern systems start at 14 SEER and go up from there. In practical terms, that means your old system might be using 40% more electricity than a new one to do the same job.
In DFW, where your AC runs from April through October, that gap adds up fast. We’re talking hundreds of dollars a year, every year, on top of whatever repairs come up along the way.
The honest math usually looks like this: if your R-22 system needs a repair that costs more than a few hundred dollars and it’s over 15 years old, the money you’d spend on that repair would go further as part of a replacement investment. Not always — every situation is different — but that’s the conversation worth having.
What We Actually Tell Homeowners
We don’t push replacement. Our technicians don’t work on commission, so there’s no incentive for us to talk you into a new system if yours doesn’t need one. If a repair is the right call, we’ll tell you that.
But if you’ve got an R-22 system that’s 20-plus years old and you’re watching your summer energy bills climb every year, it’s worth at least running the numbers on what a replacement would actually cost versus what you’re spending to keep the old one alive.
We’re happy to have that conversation with you straight — no pressure, no pitch. Just the facts about your system.
Schedule a service call or call us at 469-905-4822 and we’ll take a look at what you’ve got.
Expedition Heating & Air is a licensed HVAC contractor serving Garland, TX and the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. License TACLB112648E.
