I have a 11 year old Lennox heatpump unit. I had my annual service today and the tech said that I need to replace the TXV unit. The following is what he quoted me:

Parts $43
Recover/vacuum/recharge/drier $592
TXV Labor $679
Total $1314

Does this seem reasonable?

Thank you, Steve

WOW!, where I come from, that's highway robbery

I couldn`t sleep at night for robbing someone that way,,


Get some more quotes from other ,companies

I may have a different look on this. The recovery etc, is time consuming and takes expensive equiptment and knowledge to do correctly. However, the txv labor seems a bit high, or extremely high. Hard to say for sure. It really all depends on if the txv is inside or outside the plenum, and if the txv has compression fittings, or is brazed in to the coil. Many txv require being able to pull the coil out to replace the txv, which many times requires cutting the furnace vent, the coil drain, and removing anything that would prevent you from removing the coil. This is a tough call. However, I do think wmproop may be correct. I would suggest getting in another company to see if their price is in the same range. It could be viable, or it could very well be a rippoff. Make sure not to tell the next company what you were quoted, as not to bias their quote. Almost nothing is cheap about ac when you have to break into the actuall refrigerant system, but Im somewhat stumped on the txv labor. Please let us know what you find.

PS. As far as the other charges, it shows that they are going to do a professional job, right up to replacing the filter/drier (really a must). Oh, and one more question, is this a r22 or r410 unit? If the system is contaminated, and they can't reuse the old refrigerant, then the cost of r22 is through the roof. And if its 410, the system must be purged with nitrogen while brazing, and requires separate gauges, vac pump, reclaiming equiptment etc for the 410. Lot more to it than meets the eye. Hope this help. I can tell you that is wouldn't cost that much here, at least not through my company, but labor cost vary greatly from area to area. Take care.

Oops. Just reread. 11 year old heat pump. Well, its definitely r22.