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Widespread Formicary Corrosion Causes?
Hi there, I'm wondering if anyone else has had or seen cases of massive formicary corrosion in Fan Coil Units and what the ultimate cause may have been. I manage the facilities of a number of apartment buildings and we had about 60 FCU's fail in one building. I have never had as many fail before. We have heard of construction VOC's being a leading cause, but that argument seems crazy since the VRF systems we installed are typically going into new construction environments and that would be negligent to manufacture a coil that would inherently corrode in the environment it is supposed to be installed into, so we're not buying that argument...
I'd like to know from your all's experience what contributes to massive cases like this?
LG Multi-V VRF.
Thank you!
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What year are they? there was/is an industry wide Indoor Coil Issue with Ants Nest Corrosion ( Fromisc Acid ) but really boiled down to bad copper in the coils- I am assuming your FC's are copper
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They were manufactured between 2009-2012. What was wrong with the manufactured copper? Yes, sorry if I didn't specify, they are indeed copper.
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Originally Posted by
GROQ
They were manufactured between 2009-2012. What was wrong with the manufactured copper? Yes, sorry if I didn't specify, they are indeed copper.
Those are the years- you are in with the rest of us, best of luck
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Well it's nice to know that misery has company. If you can share any more info that you may be aware of can you give me a call? five oh nine three 44-9240.
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Originally Posted by
GROQ
Well it's nice to know that misery has company. If you can share any more info that you may be aware of can you give me a call? five oh nine three 44-9240.
there is so much out there, Google is your friend on this, there are a couple Class Action suits, but it boils down to bad copper that most MFG's bought, they all blamed VOC's in the beginning, but hard to do when the 30 year old unit we pulled out was fine and the new failed in the same environment or two systems in the home or business and only the one in that Vintage leaks--Changed coils t aluminum or Tin Plated, same environment No Issues
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Well it's nice to know that misery has company. If you can share any more info that you may be aware of can you give me a call? five oh nine three 44-9240.
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sorry, didn't mean to post that again, browser button... fat finger
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Here is some anecdotal evidence for you. I was in the process of tearing units apart for scrape, looking for a way to speed up the process especially getting the tube sheets off the coil. I tried a plasma cutter which is not suppose to touch copper and it went right through the coil tubes, tried it on the manifold and it wouldn't touch it or part of the line set. This tells me there is something else in the coil tubes than just copper.
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Whoa, got it. We are sending our coils out for analysis now. Had it done before by an LG directed engineering firm. They told us it was all our fault, so we sent another unit to another engineering firm, they have only confirmed that it is corroded, but haven't analyzed copper composition yet, we'll have them do that next apparently.