LiveIt's A/C season: Here's what you need to know now Forget mosquitoes: The onset of summer in NYC is marked by the universal hum of millions of window air conditioners. But are you up to date on the city's A/C rules? In the past, we've covered such critical A/C issues as whether it’s worth the money to get your unit cleaned out, tipping advice for installation, and how to install an A/C if window bars get in the way (carefully). Below, a few other must-knows:Who does the installing?Installing a window unit isn’t your super’s responsibility, it’s yours, says property manager Mark Levine of Excel Bradshaw Management Group. “Unless this is a pre-established policy within the building, a renter or unit owner shouldn’t assume that it will be taken care of by the building staff,” he says.But Levine cautions that apartment dwellers shouldn't do it themselves. Since installing a window A/C incorrectly could spell disaster for New Yorkers walking by your building, he recommends outsourcing, especially since many companies provide properly insured installation services when you purchase a new unit.

What will it cost?Brick Underground compared prices at some local air-conditioner installers to see how much it’ll cost to get your cool on and found a wide range of pricing for window installation, all of which depend upon size and type of air conditioner and whether or not bracket installation is required.outdoor ac unit baseAir-Wave Air Conditioning quotes $245 and up; 6 ton air conditioner costFive Borough AC starts at $200, and Mike’s Air Conditioning starts at $195.What about brackets?my window ac unit keeps freezingNYC law actually takes the frightening possibility of A/C accidents into account by requiring that window air conditioners installed in buildings six stories and higher be secured with metal brackets or mounting rails.

(More information on city guidelines is here.)Worst case scenario: The A/C falls outAnd what if, despite your best efforts, the A/C still falls out your window? You’re responsible for it, says Jeff Schneider of Gotham Brokerage (fyi, a Brick sponsor), who explains that such an occurrence falls under the personal liability portion of most renters insurance policies, which typically covers at least $100,000 worth of damage. “But that’s only if you’re not doing intentional damage,” says Schneider. “So you can’t throw [an A/C] at someone."***Updated on June 1, 2016. To throw out an air conditioner, make an appointment to have the Department of Sanitation remove the chlorofluorocarbons (CFC). They will then tag the air conditioner and collect it on your next recycling day.We may be in the clear when it comes to heat domes, but it’s still really hot. More than half of the country has had temperatures in the 90s in the last week, prompting many people to find relief in the cool, crisp breeze of an air-conditioner.

But in the next few years, the way air-conditioners work could change. Last month, representatives from nearly 200 countries worked on a new environment agreement to regulate the use of HFCs, or hydrofluorocarbons. These chemical compounds are responsible for keeping you cool on hot summer days, in air-conditioners and refrigerators. And even though you might not have heard of them, environmentalists, government officials and scientists say an agreement to limit HFCs represents a significant step in the fight to stave off the worst effects of global warming.That’s because like other greenhouse gases, HFCs contribute to global warming. But mostly, they’re not coming from your air-conditioner, though air-conditioning poses other environmental problems. So we’re here to answer some questions you might have about HFCs, air-conditioning and this new treaty.HFCs represent a small portion of total greenhouse gas emissions, but they trap thousands of times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Good news: If your air-conditioner is working properly, it won’t release HFCs into the atmosphere. Some HFCs are released during the manufacturing process, if your air-conditioner or refrigerator has a leak, or when you throw a unit away, possibly causing some molecules to escape, especially if it’s disposed of improperly (Here’s some guidance on proper disposal). The United States has also put regulations in place to phase out the use of HFCs in other areas like aerosols and building foam.Air-conditioning presents other problems: As of 2009, nearly 90 percent of American homes have air-conditioners, which account for about 6 percent of all the country’s residential energy use. All that air-conditioning releases about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. This is your cheat sheet. According to historians and others, the widespread availability of air-conditioning has allowed for more development in the hotter parts of the country — the South and the Southwest — where air-conditioning use is the highest in the country.

And once developers could rely on heating and cooling technologies, they often built less energy-efficient homes, which means that you have to use more air-conditioning or heating to get to the temperature you want.Representatives from the same countries who negotiated the Paris agreement met in Vienna to discuss a plan for phasing out HFCs.Any deal reached in these talks would be an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which phased out CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) only a few years after scientists published results showing the harm those chemicals were doing to the ozone layer.The United States, which already has some regulations in place to limit HFCs, wants to begin phasing out production and use in 2019 in developed countries, and in 2021 in developing countries, though some developing countries, like India, would prefer a longer time-frame — beginning in 15 years. These restrictions, they say, would place an unfair economic burden on their citizens, especially as air-conditioning use is expected to skyrocket there in the next few decades.

However, the Environmental Protection Agency said that because another chemical compound, HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons), are still commonly used in the developing world, it would be better if they skipped ahead to the more environmentally-friendly replacements, rather than setting up a whole economy based on HFCs and then making the switch. HCFCs are not currently widely used in the United States and production and import here were largely halted last year. No, although some experts say that there may be a time in the future when the climate in some places will be so hot that air-conditioning won’t be able to maintain comfortable temperatures.And several companies are already working on cooling replacements for HFCs. For instance, Honeywell, which makes your dehumidifier but also plane engines, has already invested close to a billion dollars in developing and patenting an HFC substitute, which is already used by some manufacturers.According to Ken Gayer, a vice president at Honeywell, these new molecules, known as HFOs (hydrofluoroolefins), break down in a matter of days, so there’s less time for them to trap heat in the atmosphere.