Everyone’s getting on the A2L bandwagon.

“When you had the initial transition from R-22 to R-410A, people were kind of reluctant to make that change,” he said. But there’s a “big buzz” around the new refrigerant, and the marketplace is taking hold of the change and accepting it well, he said.

“We have some customers that are actually already asking for our R-32 product,” he said. “I think most of these customers are saying, ‘Hey, look, if this is our refrigerant for the future, let's just start putting it in our buildings today and then we won’t have to worry about that phasedown.’”

“They’re ready to go,” added his colleague TJ Wheeler, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Friedrich. “The demand is there.”

Next Year’s Construction Season

Speaking at an ACHR NEWS webinar titled “Are A2L Refrigerants Elevating In-Room HVAC Solutions?” that was recorded at the AHR Expo in Chicago, Huber, Wheeler, and their colleague Jerad Adams, senior manager of product management at Friedrich, outlined several ways they predict the refrigerant transition will impact the construction industry.

“While I don't think the construction of properties like lodging are going to change wholescale, I think there are some things that people can start planning for, in the design and development stage, to really help avoid pitfalls or maybe slowdowns or hangups in the commissioning process and opening,” said Wheeler.

The impact on multistory buildings, asserted Adams, has to do with mechanical code and how to deal with the chase, which Adams said could result in design changes in both typical vertical construction and lodging construction in that vertical.

“ASHRAE 15-2019, as well as International Mechanical Code Chapter 11, specifically states that when using A2L refrigerants installed in multi-floor buildings, the linesets have to be installed in fire-rated, single chase,” Adams said.

That’s very different from what’s done currently. Today, traditional construction would have all those linesets coming into a central mechanical chase, then going to the floor. Going forward, each one of those linesets will need to have its own mechanical chase.

“That's a pretty big deal,” said Huber. “In non-packaged equipment, where you have linesets that are going from a condenser to an evaporator in larger applications, you're going to have a great number of linesets going through that building. If you think it from being a condenser, maybe 200 or 300 evaporators as linesets going in.”

Within each of those linesets is refrigerant — and it’ll be what’s considered mildly flammable refrigerant, so it’ll need to be treated accordingly.

“Each one of those linesets needing to have a single use, or be insulated, completely changes the dynamic of how you build a building,” Huber continued. “Now you’ll have to have a place for all of those linesets and a place for all those fire-rated chases, and you’ll have to have a building that's designed around it.”

And that, perhaps even more than installing the necessary sensors for A2L equipment, is what’s going to drive up construction costs, he said.

“Once you get to the multistory buildings, cost goes up, labor goes up, everything kind of goes up with that whole process,” Huber said.

And the time to be thinking about this is now, said Wheeler.

“I don't think this has been absorbed by a lot of people yet, because A2Ls are still kind of new, but when you think about the planning and the property and the development, it's now when people need to be considering this, right?” he said. “This is next year's construction. This is going to impact heavily, and it's going to change so many economic dynamics, so many architectural dynamics of the way that buildings are built and the types of product that are selected.”

The full webinar will be rebroadcast live (sign up here) on March 6, 2024, and can be viewed on-demand for one year.