// Services
One is judged against a published specification and carries our AHRI certification. The other is a condition assessment with no specification to be judged against, and we say so. Which you need depends on what you are trying to find out.
01Side by side
The row worth reading twice is the last one. The AHRI Refrigerant Testing Laboratory certification covers refrigerant work and nothing else.
| Aspect | Refrigerant Analysis | Refrigeration Oil Analysis |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Does this material meet AHRI Standard 700 for the refrigerant it is labelled as? It is a specification question with a defined answer. | What condition is this oil in, and what is it carrying? It is a condition question, and the answer is a description rather than a verdict. |
| What it is measured against | A published limit table, and a different row of it for every fluid — 22 single-component refrigerants and 25 blends. We publish the whole table, so you can see the bar before you pay for the test. | There is no AHRI 700 for used refrigeration oil and no certified pass/fail specification for it. The result is a reading of condition and wear, not a verdict against a limit table. |
| What comes back | A result, the limit applying to your fluid, and a verdict on every one of the 7characteristics — including “not applicable” printed as such where the standard does not require the test. Blends are reported per component against their windows. | Condition and wear findings for the oil sampled, with no pass or fail against a certified specification. |
| The sample you have to take | A cylinder rated to 400 psi, evacuated to 50 microns or better, drawn from the Liquid valve to 75–80% — about 350 g. Plus a separate vapour draw if the non-condensables number matters. | borosilicate graduated glass sample bottle, degassed before it is sealed. POE and Solest oils absorb moisture quickly, even in a sealed bottle. Send samples promptly. |
| Phase sampled | Liquid for 6 of the 7 characteristics; vapour for non-condensables, with the source temperature recorded at the moment of draw. | Liquid, into a bottle rather than a cylinder. |
| Fluids in scope | Single-component refrigerants and blends — 22 and 25 respectively in the published table, CFC through HFO. | Condition and wear analysis for chiller and refrigeration compressor oil — mineral, alkylbenzene, POE and PVE. |
| AHRI Certified® scope | CoveredWe are an AHRI Certified® Refrigerant Testing Laboratory — the only one in California — and this is the work that certification covers. | Not coveredThe RTL programme certifies refrigerant testing. It has no oil scope at all, so nothing on our oil pages borrows it. |
02Which do I need?
Not every situation needs both tests, and we would rather tell you that here than sell you the second one.
| What you are looking at | Test | Why that one |
|---|---|---|
| Hermetic motor burnout; charge recovered, system open | Both | Acidity and chloride on the refrigerant decide whether the recovered charge is worth reclaiming or is scrap. The oil tells you whether the clean-up is finished before you recharge — which is a different question, asked of a different sample, and one the refrigerant result cannot answer. |
| Reclaimed batch about to be sold on | Refrigerant | This is the case AHRI 700 exists for, and the one where the laboratory behind the number becomes part of your record rather than a formality. The limits are published here. |
| Cylinder of unknown provenance, or a label you do not trust | Refrigerant | Composition, not purity, is what catches this. A blend can be 99.5% pure and still fail, because each component has its own two-sided window. A single purity figure will pass material that is out of specification. |
| Scheduled chiller PM, machine running normally | Oil | Oil is the one that repays a routine interval, because it is a trend. Add a refrigerant test when the machine has been opened, topped up from a cylinder you did not fill yourself, or run on a charge of unknown history. |
| Purge unit running more than it used to on a low-pressure machine | Neither | AHRI 700 exempts fluids whose normal boiling point is at or above room temperature from the non-condensables characteristic — R-11, R-113, R-123, R-141b, R-245fa, R-1233zd(E). A 700 result on your R-123 charge therefore will not report the air your purge unit is pulling; that is a machine measurement, and no laboratory result substitutes for it. Test the charge if its moisture, acidity or oil carry-over is in question — just not for this. |
| Acid or burnt smell at the service valve | Both | Acidity limits are per fluid — 1 and 3 ppm as HCl across the published table — and chloride is its own check: Turbidity — turbidity appears at roughly 3 ppm by weight. The oil holds what the charge left behind, so the two samples answer different halves of the same question. |
| Moisture suspicion — drier indicator, sight glass, system opened | Both | Water limits are 10 / 15 / 20 / 100 ppm depending on the fluid, not one number, and a generic limit column will judge a low-pressure charge against the wrong one. On the oil side, moisture is the number the sampling procedure is built around — the bottle is degassed before it is sealed and the sample goes out promptly, because a sample that waits measures the wait. |
The middle column names a test, not a credential. Only refrigerant testing sits inside our AHRI Certified®scope, so a “Both” row means one certified test and one uncertified one, run on two different samples taken two different ways.
03The boundary
One of these two services sits inside the AHRI Certified® scope and the other sits entirely outside it. Which is which changes what our result is worth to a third party who asks you for it.
Covered
Purity and contamination testing to AHRI Standard 700. We hold AHRI Certified® Refrigerant Testing Laboratory certification and are the only such laboratory in California. We do not print certificate numbers on this site — a number on a web page cannot tell you whether it is still current, and the register can.
Check us in AHRI’s directory ↗Not covered
Condition and wear analysis for chiller and refrigeration compressor oil — mineral, alkylbenzene, POE and PVE. The AHRI Refrigerant Testing Laboratory programme has no oil scope — not a narrower one, none — so nothing about that certification transfers to this service, and no oil page on this site borrows it. The oil result stands on the method used and the report issued.
How the oil service works →Disclosure: we share ownership with a refrigerant reclaimer that occupies the adjacent unit of this building, and we test material it buys. That is stated on every page rather than discovered later. How the laboratory is kept separate from it.
04Either service
Whichever test you need, the sample is the part you control and the part that decides whether the number means anything.
01
Log the fluid or oil and the system it came from before the sample travels, so it arrives already identified and you hold your own record of what you sent.
Register a sample →02
Refrigerant goes into a 400 psi cylinder from the liquid valve; oil goes into a glass bottle that is degassed before sealing. Both procedures are published in full.
Sampling procedures →03
An example report, annotated line by line, so nothing on the document that comes back is a surprise — including the lines that read Not Applicable.
See an example report →Still not sure
If one of the two answers your question, we will say so rather than quote you for both.
