HARDI on R-454B: “The Crisis Is Over”
R-454B cylinders are finally easier to find. Customers ready to buy new systems? Not so much.
EVERYONE GETS R-454B: A2L refrigerant is back on the shelves at most supply houses across the U.S.
Many in the industry are calling it: The refrigerant shortage — at least, the really bad part — is officially over.
That’s the consensus emerging from distributors across the country. According to HARDI, which has been monitoring the situation closely through its members, the supply crunch that left many scrambling for R-454 earlier this year has eased significantly.
“If you were to be really specific, I would definitely say the crisis is over,” Alex Ayers, HARDI’s director of government affairs, told me on the phone in mid-October. “Whether everyone across the entire channel has every single cylinder they want — we’re probably still a little ways away from that, and that’s more reflective of pricing than availability.”
Ayers said distributors began reporting improved availability in late August and September, as cooling season slowed down and the supply chain caught up.
“That’s when we definitely noticed a shift in people’s reaction,” he said. The panic was gone. And with six months before next year’s cooling season begins, what remains to be smoothed out is “easily taken care of through the end of this year.”
The Pricing Hangover
Right now, the biggest contractor paint point isn’t availability — it’s pricing. Granted, it’s not out-of-control pricing like we saw over the summer, where one cylinder could go for upwards of $900.
“It shot up and it’s shot back down, now that cooling season is over,” said Ayers, who has been tracking refrigerant pricing for a year and a half. “We’re still facing elevated pricing as the tail to the refrigerant supply, but we’re seeing it come down month-over-month. If that trend continues, we’ll be pretty good by the end of the year.”
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That’s consistent with what Manny Griego, owner of mechanical contractor Arrowhead Superior Refrigeration, is seeing in Peoria, Arizona.
“We are able to get R-454B pretty much from any parts house,” he said. Pricing varies by refrigerant and by store, but it’s “still pretty high up there” right now.
Griego said his team hasn’t forgotten how tight things got earlier this year.
“I have a tank sitting next to me of 454A and 454B,” he said, reaching underneath his desk to show me over Zoom. “They are pretty much under lock and key, with a camera that points right at it. They don’t sit in our vehicles — they do not even sit in our warehouse. We’ve been treating it like it’s liquid gold.”
The A2L Puzzle
While R-454B supply looks solid, other A2L refrigerants — particularly for commercial refrigeration — are still uneven. For example, Griego said that 454A and 454C are “out there,” but in shorter supply — and not all distributors are even carrying them yet. He’s heard of shipments coming later this year — “hopefully late November or December” — as the industry prepares for the 2026 transition date.
That’s partly because not all distributors are selling A2L systems yet, Ayers explained, and partly because of uncertainty around EPA’s pending rulemaking.
“The proposed rule out of EPA and their possible delay of A2L systems for remote condensing units complicates that,” Ayers said. EPA has teased removing the installation compliance date for R-410A equipment, as long as components are manufactured or imported before January 1, 2025. “There’s some risk right now in taking on A2L inventory if that’s not going to be what the market moves to because a different product is available.”
Will that happen? Ayers said it’s unclear whether EPA’s timeline would actually work out.
“It’s hard to see how that rule gets finalized by the end of this year,” he said. “And even if it did get finalized, say on December 31, there’s a 30-day effective date, so it’s the end of January. What happens in that donut hole where the A2L requirement is technically in place but relief is coming, if someone needs a system installed?”
As for R-410A, Ayers was definitive: “410A is definitely done.” The industry’s not going back, he said — all that’s affected by this rule change would be remote condensing units and the refrigeration space, where changing those manufacturing cutoff dates is the question mark.
For now, distributors and contractors are breathing easier.
“We’re happy to see that we’re either out of the tunnel or very close to that light at the end of the tunnel,” Ayers said. “Depending on how much you have in your warehouse, the bulk of this issue is over — it’s just the edges we’re taking care of now.”
Sticker Shock and Softening Demand
But make no mistake: Even as the supply chain steadies, shock waves from the shortage are still reverberating across the industry.
In the field, the worst may be behind us — most contractors can now get R-454B when needed — but the broader damage persists. In their second-quarter updates, manufacturers painted a similar picture: Lennox said inconsistent supply had rattled dealer confidence, and both Carrier and Trane reported that April and May bottlenecks dragged down residential volume. Across HVAC sales, the era of “sticker shock” took hold. Between the refrigerant shakeup, tariffs, and repeated price hikes, system costs have climbed by thousands of dollars in just a few years. With many homeowners opting to repair rather than replace, OEMs are warning that residential demand is weakening faster than expected — forecasting sales to plunge anywhere from 20-40% in Q3 alone.
The cylinders are back — but so are the scars. The crisis may be over, but rebuilding momentum will take far longer than restocking a warehouse.
