I have installed an air conditioner on a car before and have charged many car air conditioners for people legally after a 5 minute "training" from the sales guy at autozone. I figured home units could not be much harder so I was not deterred by the "safety concerns." I have researched what is involved in doing it at home and would like to share my findings.

#1: Freon is probably less dangerous than half the cleaning chemicals in your house. The biggest danger is that you may forget to breathe oxygen if you are in an enclosed space or that it is a compressed gas and it could blow up in your face (maybe, i suppose its possible, but it would be a special event). Either way I ain't skeerd.

#2: EPA regulations do not actually force you to repair slow leaks on small home units (as long as they really are slow leaks on small units)

#3: With approximately 100 dollars in equipment, you can probably service and install your own AC units. At 75 dollars minimum per service call, this seems like a decent investment.

And now (drum roll please) for the best secret of them all

#4: In order to service the units, you do need an EPA cert. If you are interested in getting one to call your own, it costs 25 dollars. It is a 50 question open book multiple choice test that you can do online. You have 3 hours and unlimited chances to take it. I took a sample test for fun with no preparation or even a printout of the book and scored 29/50. The score I need to pass is 42/50. A sample question was "You dehydrate the system to A)Remove oil B)Remove water D)remove freon"

Just thought I would share.