Repairs Won't Fix It? The Retrofit-or-Retirement Plan You File With the EPA — 30 Days to Write, One Year to Finish

Last week we covered the repair-deadline extension — the EPA filing that buys you time when a repair you can make is stuck behind a backordered part. We ended it with a fork: an extension is for a repair you can make but can't make in time. It does nothing for a leak you can't make stop.

This is the other side of that fork.

Sometimes the part isn't the problem — the system is. The coil's been patched twice, the verification test held for six weeks and then the unit started losing charge again, and your honest read is that no repair is going to bring this appliance back under threshold and keep it there. That's not an extension situation. Under Subpart C, the moment you and the building owner decide you're going to retrofit or retire the appliance instead of repairing it, a different obligation switches on — a written plan you file with the EPA, with two hard deadlines of its own.

And here's the part that catches people: the deadline to write that plan is the same 30-day window you've been counting against the repair. The clock doesn't reset because you switched strategies.

Two Doors Out of an Exceedance, Not One

Start with the rule that frames everything. When refrigerant is added to a covered appliance and the calculated leak rate comes back over the applicable threshold — 10% comfort cooling, 20% commercial refrigeration, 30% industrial process — § 84.106 gives the owner or operator two ways to comply, not one.

Read that as a fork in the road, because that's what it is. Door one is repair — diagnose it, fix it, run verification tests, document, done. Door two is retrofit or retire — convert the appliance to a different refrigerant, or take it out of service entirely. The repair door lives in paragraphs (d) through (f). The retrofit/retire door lives in (h) and (i). They are different obligations with different paperwork.

The repair-or-retrofit-or-retire decision framework post walks the economics of which door to pick — the five-year math, the R-410A vs. R-454B numbers, the Section 179 tax angle for the building owner. This post is about what door two requires of you on paper once the decision is made. The decision is a business call. The plan is a federal filing.

The 30-Day Clock Doesn't Reset — It Carries Over

This is the single most misunderstood thing about the retrofit/retirement path, so it goes first.

The instinct is to read it as a sequence: you get 30 days to try the repair, the repair fails, then a fresh 30-day clock starts to write the plan. That's not how it works. The trigger for the plan is the same event that triggered the repair clock — the appliance exceeding the applicable leak rate.

So the timeline is not "30 days, then another 30 days." It's one 30-day window with two possible exits. The day the leak rate goes over threshold, the countdown starts. Inside those 30 days you either repair the unit or you have a signed retrofit/retirement plan in hand. You don't get to spend the 30 days repairing, discover on day 28 it's hopeless, and then claim a new month to write the plan.

The clock to write the retrofit-or-retirement plan is the same 30-day clock you've been running against the repair. Decide early — because the day you conclude the unit can't be fixed, you may have far less than 30 days left to get the plan signed.

Practically, that means the retrofit/retire call is an early call. The shops that handle this cleanly don't wait for a failed repair to prove the system is done. The moment a chronic system's history says "this one isn't coming back," they start the plan in parallel — so the signed document exists well inside the window, not in a panic on day 29.

What the Plan Has to Contain

A plan isn't a sentence on the work order that says "we're replacing it." Paragraph (i) requires you to submit the plan to the EPA along with a specific set of information — and the list will look familiar, because it's nearly the same data the extension request needs. You captured most of it the day the system went over threshold.

The submission must include:

1. The date the requirement to develop a retrofit or retirement plan was triggered
2. The leak rate that put the appliance over threshold
3. The method used to determine the leak rate and the full charge (annualizing or rolling average)
4. The location of the leak(s) identified in the leak inspection
5. A description of the repair work that has been completed
6. A description of the repair work that has not been completed
7. A description of why the repair was not conducted within the timeframes required by paragraphs (d) and (f)
8. A statement, signed by an authorized company official, that all identified leaks will be repaired, with an estimate of when the retrofit or retirement will be completed — not to exceed one year from the date of the plan

Two things on that list trip people up. First, item 8 is signed by an authorized company official — for a building's HVAC system, that's the owner or operator of the appliance, the regulated party, not the contractor. Your job is to draft the technical sections; the signature belongs to the customer. Second, notice item 5 and the broader rule: all identified leaks still have to be repaired as part of any retrofit. "Retrofit" is not a license to leave a leaking component leaking — it means changing the refrigerant the appliance runs on, with the leaks fixed in the process. Retiring the unit is the only path that ends the repair obligation, because the appliance leaves service.

The One-Year Clock Starts the Day You Sign

The second deadline is the completion deadline, and it's a hard ceiling, not a target.

That one year is generous compared to the 30-day repair clock — which is the point. The EPA gives you room to do a capital project right: spec the equipment, get the building owner's budget approval, order the unit, schedule the crane, pull permits. But the clock runs from the plan date, not from when the customer finally cuts the check. If the building owner stalls for ten months on approving the replacement, you've got two months left to complete a job that takes longer than that to source. The plan date is the start gun.

One mercy in the rule: if the appliance is mothballed — taken out of operation with the refrigerant evacuated — the retrofit/retirement timeframes are suspended. They resume when refrigerant is added back to the appliance. Mothballing is a legitimate pause, not a loophole; it means the system genuinely isn't running and isn't leaking. Don't reach for it to dodge a deadline on a unit that's still cooling the building.

The Extension That Lives Inside the One Year (and Who Actually Gets It)

Here's a distinction that matters, because it's easy to assume the one-year clock has the same flexible extension the 30-day repair clock has. For most contractors, it doesn't.

The additional-time provision in paragraph (i) is limited to industrial process refrigeration appliances. If you service rooftop units, walk-in coolers, and small commercial comfort cooling — the bread and butter of most small HVAC shops — this provision is not for you. Your one year is your one year.

For the IPR appliances that do qualify, the grounds are narrow:

• Regulatory conflict — another federal, state, local, or Tribal regulation makes retrofit or retirement within one year genuinely impossible. Additional time is allowed only to the extent needed to comply with that other regulation.
• Custom-built equipment — the new or retrofitted equipment is custom-built (as defined in the subpart) and the supplier has quoted a delivery time of more than 30 weeks from when the order is placed. The equipment then has to be installed within 120 days of receiving the parts.
• Radiological contamination — the equipment sits in an area subject to radiological contamination and making it safe to work in will take more than 30 weeks.

And the timing on that request is unforgiving in a familiar way: an IPR owner has to submit the additional-time request before the end of the ninth month of the one-year period, and it's considered approved unless the EPA notifies them within 60 days of receipt that it isn't. Wait until month eleven and there's no mechanism to extend — same trap as the repair extension, where the request is due inside the very window it's trying to stretch.

For the comfort-cooling and commercial-refrigeration systems most readers service: plan around one year, full stop.

Don't Confuse This With the March 1 Chronic-Leaker Report

A quick but important point of order, because the paragraph letters are close enough to cause real mistakes.

The retrofit-or-retirement plan lives in § 84.106(h) and (i). It is a forward-looking document — "here's how and when we'll fix this appliance for good." It has nothing to do with the chronic-leaker report, which is a separate, backward-looking annual filing in a different paragraph entirely: appliances that leak 125% or more of their full charge in a calendar year get reported to the EPA by March 1 of the following year.

You can owe both. A chronic system that you've decided to replace can be over 125% for the calendar year (triggering the March 1 report) and under a signed retrofit/retirement plan (triggering the one-year completion clock) at the same time. They're independent obligations with independent deadlines. Don't let one stand in for the other.

The Operational Habit That Makes This Routine

Like the extension, none of this is hard once it's built into your process. The shops that handle the retrofit/retire path cleanly do four things:

They decide door one vs. door two early. A chronic system's service history usually tells you by the second or third event whether repair is realistic. Make the call while there's runway left in the 30-day window — not on day 28.

They reuse the numbers they already have. Leak rate, calculation method, full charge, exceedance date, leak location, repairs attempted — every field the plan needs is something you recorded when the unit went over threshold. If it's sitting in your per-appliance records, drafting the plan is a fifteen-minute assembly job.

They put the signature on the right person. The plan is signed by the owner/operator of the appliance, because they're the regulated party. The contractor drafts; the customer signs. Build that handoff into the conversation so it isn't a scramble at the end of the window.

They calendar the one-year date the day the plan is signed. Plan date plus 365 is the install-and-commission deadline. Put it on the schedule immediately, work backward from it for equipment lead time and crane availability, and don't let the building owner's slow approval eat the runway.

The contractor who knows this cold turns a dead system into a clean handoff. You tell the building owner on day two that this unit isn't worth chasing, you draft the plan, they sign it, and the replacement gets done inside the year with the paperwork already on file. That's not a compliance emergency — that's the contractor they keep.

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An extension holds a repair you can make. A retrofit/retirement plan governs a system you've decided to replace. Between them, every leak-rate exceedance has a documented, on-time exit — if you start the clock the day the system goes over threshold instead of the day you panic.