If your estate includes air conditioning, cold rooms or commercial refrigeration, F-Gas regulation applies to you — not just to the firm that services the kit. The rules are less complicated than their reputation suggests, but they hinge on one calculation most operators have never seen written down.
The calculation that decides everything
Every refrigerant has a global warming potential (GWP) — how much heat one kilogram traps compared with one kilogram of CO₂. R-410A, common in air conditioning, has a GWP of about 2,088. Multiply a system’s refrigerant charge by its GWP and you get its CO₂-equivalent: a 5 kg R-410A system is roughly 10.4 tonnes CO₂e.
That single number — charge × GWP — determines whether a system needs leak checks at all, and how often.
The bands
| System size (CO₂e) | Leak check — no detection system | With automatic leak detection |
|---|---|---|
| 5 to 50 tonnes | Every 12 months | Every 24 months |
| 50 to 500 tonnes | Every 6 months | Every 12 months |
| 500+ tonnes | Every 3 months (detection required) | Every 6 months |
Records of each check — who, when, what was found, any refrigerant added or recovered — must be kept for at least five years. In the UK this regime comes from retained Regulation 517/2014; the EU’s replacement, Regulation 2024/573, keeps the banded structure while tightening the phase-down around it. Japan runs a comparable two-track system of quarterly simple inspections and certified periodic inspections under its Fluorocarbon Emission Control Act.
The part estates teams miss: you are the operator
The legal duty to ensure checks happen — and to keep the records — sits with the operator of the equipment: normally the business that controls its day-to-day use. That is you, not your contractor. A good contractor will run the schedule for you; but if they miss a unit, lose a record, or lose the contract, the exposure is yours. Regulators and auditors ask the operator.
Why calendar reminders quietly fail
Leak-check frequency is a function of refrigerant charge — and charge changes. A system that is topped up after a repair can cross a band boundary, and its check interval changes with it. A spreadsheet with annual reminders does not notice. Neither does a contractor’s generic planned-maintenance schedule. The failure mode is silent: everything looks compliant until an audit reconstructs the arithmetic.
The robust approach is to schedule from the system’s live charge: every gas movement recorded, CO₂e recalculated on every change, and the next required check derived from the current band — with the job raised automatically when it falls due.
What good looks like
An estate on top of F-Gas can answer four questions in minutes: which systems are in scope, when each was last checked, when each is next due, and where the five-year records are. FaciliTasker does this natively — a per-system gas ledger, CO₂e recalculated on every charge change, leak-check jobs raised automatically, and an audit pack per system on demand, across UK, EU and Japanese regimes. If refrigeration is part of your estate, book a demo — bring your worst site.
This article is general information, not legal or compliance advice. Thresholds and duties vary by jurisdiction and equipment type — check the current rules for your systems.
