The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has created regulations under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 to reduce hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions. These regulations include:
- Requiring repairs for equipment leaks and using automatic leak detection in certain machines that use HFCs or similar substances.
- Making sure repairs and servicing of some equipment are done with reclaimed HFCs.
- Requiring fire suppression equipment to be installed or repaired using recycled HFCs.
- Training for technicians and recycling HFCs before fire suppression systems are thrown away.
- Removing HFCs from disposable cylinders before they are discarded.
- New rules for recordkeeping, reporting, and labeling.
AHCA discussed these new regulations with refrigeration experts and below are items shared for nursing facilities to review to determine the potential impact.
- This will most likely affect equipment that was installed more than 10 years ago as more recent/modern equipment does not utilize HFC.
- Larger existing nursing homes with older chillers likely already pass the 50lb threshold and have been tested and inspected accordingly. The testing and maintenance of these larger chiller systems generally occurs automatically by a licensed HVAC contractor when they are maintaining larger chiller units/systems.
- Smaller nursing homes (often single story) may have chiller equipment below 50lb which could create increased scrutiny of their systems if additional testing is required.
- It is hard to assess the impact on Assisted Living as the buildings and related equipment vary greatly. Many AL communities commonly heat and cool rooms/apartments with individual room units that would fall below the proposed 15lb threshold. Many AL buildings are newer and include modern equipment that does not utilize HFC. Similar to nursing homes, older and larger buildings with large chiller units likely already pass the 50lb threshold.
- This likely won't have a huge impact on providers in areas outside of HVAC. Modern fridges, freezers, and ice machines have moved away from using HFC and when there is an issue with such equipment, it is commonly replaced vs. repaired.