Refrigerant Work Order Flow
- Joseph Yarborough (Unlicensed)
- Lamont Eddins
The workflow for work orders involving assets that contain ozone depleting refrigerants is similar to other work orders, with a few added enhancements, designed to assist in keeping your company compliant with local and national laws. When an asset that contains refrigerant requires additional refrigerant to be added, the EPA requires that a Leak Rate Calculation be conducted to determine whether or not the legally allowable percentage of ozone depleting refrigerants has exceeded the threshold set for the specific type of asset. If the threshold has been exceeded, then the company must either repair the leak within 30 days or develop a Retrofit or Retirement plan for the asset. Additionally, each time refrigerant is added a leak record must be created, regardless of whether or not the threshold has been breached.
In an effort to reduce the amounts of refrigerants that are released into the atmosphere, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has amended its’ National Recycling and Emission Reduction Program, more commonly known as Section 608. The purpose of this amendment is to reduce the release of greenhouse gases by tightening the allowable leak thresholds, requiring more accountability on the part of contractors and technicians and increasing the frequency of system inspections by certified EPA technicians.
Acknowledging Compliance Statement
When enabled, within the leak event report, at least one leak inspection method must be chosen and confirming the acknowledgement statement before proceeding with the closing of a work order. This acknowledgement statement is created by the Refrigerant Tracking Manager in Refrigerant Admin.
- Locate a work order and click the Edit button to open its details
- Answer the leak and refrigerant questions
- Optional: Select a technician to assign the work order
Select leak verification method
You can select more than one leak verification method.
- Click the checkbox to verify the Compliance Acknowledgement Statement
- Click Next to complete the process.
Follow-Up Refrigerant Work Orders
When a technician has serviced a refrigerant work order, they are required, by law, to enter the addition or removal of any ozone depleting refrigerants, including the reason why the charge was changed. Technicians with the appropriate permissions can add refrigerant use via ServiceChannel Provider, while the work order is in an Open status, or the refrigerant information can be added via Service Automation at a later time. If the amount of refrigerant used is enough to breach the set leak rate threshold then a Leak Record will be created. Once the leak record modal appears, all information requested must be entered at that time. However, if the requested information is not entered a follow-up work order will be created. The follow-up work order is created so that the legally required follow-up and resolution to the leak can be properly addressed.
