Don't get me wrong I love everything vintage and gas, I'm still using my 1965 gas furnaces that are rated an amazing 80% efficient(for the time), but not for A/C. The single best improvement we made was when the original A/C finally died and we replaced with modern electric Amanas.
The house was custom built in 64-65 with a dual zone forced air heating and in the late 60's my GPaw had TWO 3 ton Servel GAS chillers retrofitted, He was probably the first in the neighborhood to adopt central air A/C and the operation price of the inefficient electrics were still a thing for the rich or commercial endeavors. Plus, the house only had 125 AMP service and I suspect that's all many neighbors also had, not really safe enough for vintage electric central air and everything else. My grandma had health problems and needed the house refrigerated to 67 degrees in the summer, LOL I remember you literally had to put a sweater on if you visited more than an hour.
I think the 3 ton was the smallest that Arkla sold, and this was an item pushed by the gas company in those days. Picture two giant industrial rooftop units placed right outside the bedroom window) Anyhow, all this raw American horsepower made a tremendous racket, used a lot of btu's, and there was only a handful of techs certified to service these (which needed to be flushed with fresh antifreeze yearly).
When we finally switched, the gas bill disappeared, the service bill disappeared, and the electric was about the same, and we (and the neighbors) could finally sleep at night, LOL.
Funny story, So these are filled with industrial ammonia gas, and the tech of course wants a $600 each disposal fee to remove them, I tell him naw, I'll find a way to recycle it. So I put a FREEbie ad in clist and get an immediate taker, he hightails it over so fast that he got a $200 ticket exiting the off ramp LOL, So I help him load it up and explain that there are probably some good parts still left on there (he tells me his uncle is in the recycling business) then he takes off and I expect to hear no more about the beloved house refrigerator. A week later our HVAC tech shows up to install the modern A/C and he asks me with a puzzled expression: Did some guy with a gray pickup collect your chiller? I tell him yes, and then he launched into this story of how he's sitting at a stop light about 50 miles away and some guy in a gray pickup pulls up next to him with a gas chiller in the bed. He says he couldn't believe it and had to do a double take because he knows there aren't many around and he's one of the only guys that works on them. We had a great laugh and tried to calculate the coincidence of that.
The first one I dealt with had a not so funny story, My elderly mother called the city and and asked the disposal procedure for these and they tell her to just put it on the tree lawn, she tries to explain that they are gas chillers and have ammonia. The city people says that recycling of these is covered under city services. So out to the treelawn it goes, apparently what happens next is these yo-yos send out a garbage truck and proceed to crush it on the spot. predictably the ammonia canister explodes and 3 service workers have to scurry for their lives because the gas is so potent. My mom says she could smell it inside the house. I would not recommend this form of removal.
Modern air is the way to go unless it's low use vintage electric.
