In my experience as a HVAC technician and as a current HVAC contractor at newtons heating and air conditioning i can generally say i do not recommend mini splits. First lets start off with a couple of reason i would say a mini split are a good option. If you have a Florida room or sun room and you cant get duct work into this area from your central ac or maybe in your garage. I know that they may seem great at first, they don’t take very much electricity and they are quiet, no duct work, you can control each room instead of the whole house and best yet you can buy them at home depot so what’s not to like right? I can just have a HVAC contractor or a HVAC technician put one in on the side for me or maybe i can do it myself. Well here is the first problem when they break they break. On a normal central air conditioning unit there are parts we can test to say yup this is your problem and we generally have those parts on our truck. With mini splits they actually have just one big computer board and it tells you what is wrong with the unit. But the problem is the unit isn’t very smart and it cant normally diagnosing what is wrong with it accurately. In addition one part maybe bad and can cause another part to go bad but you wont know until you replace the first part. Ill give you an a example their is one main board called the inverter board and with some mini split systems not only do you have to replace the inverter board but in addition the condensing fan motor with it and if you don’t and you install the new inverter board it can ruin the new board. I can not count how many times I’ve seen other HVAC technician make this mistake. So to start off with they are very hard to properly diagnose and 9 times out of 10 you have to call the equipment manufacture so they can even tell you what the code even means that the inverter board is telling you what is wrong with the mini split. Here comes the next nightmare getting that actual parts to fix it. If you get a very well know name brand name mini split the parts will be available. But 9 times out of 10 they are at least 2 weeks out. I don’t think i have ever diagnosed a mini split and than called the supply house and had them tell me yup the part is in stock you can pick it up today. This is a problem because what if your main cooling source is your mini splits and its the middle of august in Florida. Now here is the last kicker if the unit is out of warranty the inverter boards can cost as much 2000 dollars and if you buy one from home depot you will be lucky to have a warranty and get the part, but the part is just about as expensive as a whole new unit. So say that now you have installed your mini split here are some of the most common problems. Where the copper lines connect for the refrigerant they are screwed on instead of brazed. This is a problem because they unit shakes and tend to loosen the connections and the refrigerant leaks out at these connections and i would say about 5 out 10 calls for mini splits are this problem. When this happens to you cant just add a pound of r410a like a standard system because there is no way to charge them. You have to remove all of the refrigerant and weigh it in and the amount refrigerant the mini split typically holds is about 4 pounds and adds extra cost to you the home owner. Lastly if you have a power surge or brown out which is extremely common Florida because we have a unstable power grid. This can ruin the inverter board and i have seen that a million times. That is like when you come home and all of your clocks are reset or maybe the lights flicker while you eating dinner or watching tv. After that the mini split goes into a lock out mode because the equipment manufacture Knows this can damage the unit and than you have to wait sometimes as long as 6 hours for it to naturally reset. So in conclusion at newtons heating and air conditioning , our air conditioner installation tip is to not install a mini split and use it as a last resort. If you like this article you can also visit our website to see more at www.newtonsheatingandairconditioning.com
Air conditioner installation tips, and why we don’t generally recommend mini splits for people in Clearwater, Saint Pete, Largo or all of Pinellas county
