Sam, a new graduate of UVSC's Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology program, recently took a job working for ACE Heating and Air Conditioning. ACE is a small business owned by a man named Jake and is located in a rural town in the state of Montana. Jake has been in the business for 30 years. He learned the trade in 90 days by taking a mail-order refrigeration course. Most of the work ACE does is with smaller refrigeration units like household refrigerators and freezers. They also do a lot of propane fired furnaces and a few commercial refrigeration units.
Sam took the job at ACE with the understanding that Jake would retire within the next two years and Sam would have the opportunity to take over the business. Although Jake's business was relatively small, it had grown significantly over the years as city fold from Utah and California been moved in and retired in the surrounding areas.
After a few months of employment, Sam realized that Jake seems to have a fairly steady customer base. That is, it is the same customers that call time after time and usually with the same complaints. At first, Sam thought nothing of this but then he realized that time after time the problem would be a small refrigerant leak in the system. It soon became apparent that either, Jake did very shoddy work, or he was intentionally doing things that, over time, would cause an equipment failure. Sam also noted that Jake had stockpiled several thousand pounds of refrigerant R-12. Jake had purchased the R-12 before the excise taxes, production quotas and eventual production phase-out had driven the wholesale price of R-12 from $l.90/pound to over $25.00/peound. Same knew that Jake was telling customers that R-12 was now had to find and costly to purchase at the wholesale level so he had no choice but o charge $45.00/pound for it. What Jake somehow always neglected to tell his customers was that suitable replacements for R-12 are available for considerably less cost.
In addition to all this, Sam learned that Jake did not own a piece of refrigerant recover equipment. The new EPA laws specifically state that in order to work on refrigerated equipment you must have with you an approved recovery unit as well as a certificate indicating you have been trained in proper refrigerant usage. Same came to the following conclusions concerning Jake:
- He did poor work
- He was not SPA certified as required by law
- He did not own recovery equipment as required by law
- He was braking the law by not repairing refrigerant leaks
- He was making lots of money from his customers by selling expensive R-12 to them rather than changing to a less-expensive refrigerant
- He was illegally venting refrigerants to the atmosphere
ACE is the only refrigeration outfit within 150 miles of the town. Same just moved his wife and 3 kids into a house in town. He and his family really love the rural atmosphere there. Same realizes that if he does take over ACE and do proper repairs on all the equipment, that he may put himself out of a job over the next few years.
- What should Sam do?
