The pre-charged kits are fairly inexpensive and surprisingly easy to put in, but you’ll need about $400 in extra shit.
My extra shit list:
Disconnect box
Surge suppressor
Liquid-tight whip
Lineset chase
20A breaker
Various holesaws
12/3 wire
Caulking
Duct seal
Extra insulation
Wall mount or concrete paving block
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What’s your favorite dinosaur?
Birds.
The pre-charged kits
congrats on the installation! had not heard about of these before, but makes sense. so many questions…
are we talking a 100% closed, pre charged system with both units charged - no drying or long prep needed? anything special to do between the compressor and the air handler on final connection? with supplied gear, how did everything work for you in routng lines and positioning the air handler and compressor units?
have been thinking of adding a minisplit to my server room as additional/failure-state cooling and would usually want to use a pro for the work, but this is intriguing.
again, nice detail oriented weekend work!
Completely charged. The linesets are evacuated and the compressor and head unit are precharged. If you use more than the 25’ lineset they come with, then you might have to add freon. While I do have the tools and freon around to add some if I needed as I often do AC work on my ag equipment, I didn’t have to use any. They recommend adding a certain amount if you have to use additional lineset though.
The fittings all have a dual o-ring sealing system and you can hear them pressurize when you tighten them up. Once you have it all together, you open the valves on the compressor to open the loop.
You basically check for studs, tape the pattern for the head unit to the wall where you want it, drill the lineset hole and screw the mount on. Push the lineset bundle through the wall and clip the head unit to the mount. Bend the lineset carefully so you don’t kink the copper but that seems harder to fuck up than you would think. They bend fairly nice.
If you aren’t familiar with electrical, you might want to have that done for you, but I’ve done my own electrical work for years so I wasn’t too worried about that. But you definitely don’t need to be an HVAC tech to put these in, it’s dead simple.
I’d like an update in 5 years when/if they fail/leaks. They tried precharged lineset’s years and years ago for contractors, then pulled them from the shelves because they all failed as the rings were inherently garbage and it was a big nightmare for homeowners, contractors and wholesalers
The coupling system seems pretty robust compared to the run of the mill flare fitting that you’d find on a normal install. Also, they are not just quick couplers, they’re inside a JIC so there’s a backup seal there. Maybe not as good as brazed, but flare fittings work well enough on equipment. It does have ports for charging so I could always refit with brazed lineset some day and recharge.
We’ll see. Typical charge for installing one of these things around here is upwards of $4000, on top of the $4000 they charge for a $1500 unit. I’ll take my chances since I’m all of $1800 into it. And compared to my old 4t AC PAM unit, I’m pretty sure I’ll save that in a year.
There are many good videos on YouTube. The lines are sealed with a special end that breaks in a specific way when you connect the lines and tighten them down. And then it’s properly self-sealed.
Congratulations.
Way too exciting.
Nice! How does the drainage work on the inside unit? Are you worried about it getting moldy?
They include a drainage tube that you bundle along with the lineset, making sure to keep it on the bottom of the bundle all the way and through the wall.
I was pretty careful to make sure I had a constant slope so it didn’t leave a belly to collect condensate, and I taped the joints in the tubing. I did have to go through a dead space over my basement stairs so I’ve left an access panel to be able to check that periodically. Ideally, you’d just mount it on an outside wall and there wouldn’t be any place at risk other than through the wall itself, but I didn’t have a place close enough to mount the pump unit where it wasn’t ugly.
Is it MRCOOL or does another brand make pre-charged?
Is it really quiet? How do you like it so far?
Is it possible to connect it to WiFi or is it just a remote?
If you need less than the 25 feet do you just have the extra line coiled up?
If you factor in your time at $100 per hour, what’s the all-in cost?
PerfectAire bought via Home Depot online.
Very quiet. Like almost unnoticeable, even the compressor unit is almost silent. Maybe that changes when it gets hot but it’s been rainy and cool for the last week so it wasn’t exactly getting a workout. Can’t be any noisier than the PAM unit it replaces.
It has wifi with some app called ConnectLife that has a Home Assistant integration available, but I couldn’t seem to get it to hook up to my wifi, it just sets up an AP I can connect to with the app, and then fails to find any wifi networks to let me connect it to permanently. It says in the manual that it’ll only connect to 2.4GHz networks, but I have both frequencies active on my router, and no dice. I’m not really heartbroken about that, I can use the remote. I might try turning it off and on again and see if it smartens up.
The extra lineset is just coiled next to the condensor, you can’t shorten it or you’d have to flare-fit the ends, and evac and charge it. It’s fine where it is, I had maybe 6’ of extra which is a couple coils. They’re ziptied to the joists of the decking above it.
Might have taken 8 or 10 hours to put in with the electrical since I had to rearrange my breaker box a bit to free up a slot for a 20A double pole. I do have to anchor the unit down yet but it doesn’t vibrate or anything so I wasn’t too worried about it. It would have been much faster if I could have just gone through an outside wall and had the condenser mounted on the wall or a sidewalk block under it. But I had to open up a hole in the stairwell ceiling and work inside a cramped spiderwebby cubbyhole, then crawl under a deck to put the condenser under there and lay on my side to do up the connections and wire it. I’d say 6 hours if just going through the wall and if electrical was easier.
Say 2800 with the time? Which is less than just the install price I was quoted to put one in, let alone the cost of the unit.
It says in the manual that it’ll only connect to 2.4GHz networks, but I have both frequencies active on my router, and no dice.
Are they using the same name (SSID) ? Some 2.4 only devices won’t connect to a network with the same SSID on different bands. I have a separate IoT SSID available on 2.4 only for such devices (it’s also on its own VLAN)
I wish that were the case, but I also have a VLAN’d virtual interface with a different SSID on the 2.4 radio and it’s not discovering that or the other SSIDs around the neighborhood that I’d normally see. But it’s an interesting point, I hadn’t encountered that one before.
That’s awesome. I had a second floor Mitsubishi mini split installed and it was about $8k. The electrical was probably the most time consuming. Nice work!
