[RatchetWerks]

I’m very happy others are documenting their heat pump installs.

It confirms three things for me.

1. Contractor quality is the biggest pain for the adoption of residential green tech.

2. Old homes (if not historic) should get depreciated aggressively by the market to the point that knock downs make sense. Japan does this.

3. DIY is has the hidden benefit of speed/quality/cost, since contractor pain is high. Yes, I understand the massive opportunity costs.

A friend of mine is trying to install a new central heat pump in their home. The only thing stopping them is contractors being hard to work with. Not price.

Here’s my DIY install.

https://www.ratchetwerks.com/heat-pump-mini-split-install

[conductr]

I also DIY a lot of things like this and find it really ironic how the DIY YouTubers I learn from are constantly better than a majority of professionals, especially given the insane costs they charge (I often see 3-4x equipment cost in my area).

[bityard]

The main reason I diy most of my home and car repairs is that 90% of the contractors and mechanics I have used over the years have been shockingly incompetent. Their communication skills are crap, they cut corners at every opportunity, sometimes straight up lie, and treat every customer like an idiot.

There is huge gap in the market for tradespeople who take their work even semi-seriously.

[ungreased0675]

I also DIY my car repairs, and not because I like cars.

I just hate, hate, cannot stand paying skilled craftsman hourly rates for rushed sloppy work.

[conductr]

Same. But I don’t do much on my cars. My strategy has been to just only buy Japanese cars (Honda and Toyota for me) and keep them for about 10 years or 150k miles. I’ve never needed do so anything besides replace a dead battery, fluids, filters, tires, and other basic maintenance which I let the lube shop and tire shop do. Basically the recommended 30/60/90/etc. I could do cheaper but it’s not worth the hassle for me given they can do it quickly.

I’ve bought new 3 times now with this strategy and while I could buy used and save some money or drive them longer, I view this as the cost of avoiding major maintenance.

Anytime I’ve owned a German or American made vehicle the chance of something failing is too high for me. The entire experience of having a vehicle out of commission is a huge hassle I want to avoid altogether.

Against better judgement, I do also own a Tahoe that I bought used just for doing “work”. Towing and doing dirty stuff, Home Depot runs, etc. It’s basically a tool for the DIY stuff I enjoy doing (house construction/work). It’s caused me the most grief, but still not too bad, belts and radiators and alternators, stuff I’ve diy’d because it’s easy but still stuff I’ve never had issues with on Japanese cars.

[7thpower]

I only use a shop when it’s going to take a LOT of time.

I’ve opened up my hood a few too many times to find a cap or extra bolts tucked in between the side of the hood and the weatherstrip.

Are duplicates from the new part? Did they assemble it and find they had extra fasteners (I know I have)?

Did they puncture my seat while they were in the car and then gaslight me?

I could go raise hell, but it’s difficult to prove these things and the mechanics I trusted have moved on to better careers in HVAC or elsewhere, so I just put on a podcast and do most of the work myself. It’s not so bad.

[AngryData]

Part of the problem is the pay for many tradesmen doesn't go up much for doing better work with more skills and knowledge, the only incentive most of the workers get is to just do it faster. You don't often get a bonus by making beautiful piece of work, you will get a bonus for getting done quicker even if it is the barest minimum quality of work. And many people who would make excellent craftsman are also smart and skilled enough to enter many other fields that pay better and have far less workplace hazards and doesn't involve them having to regularly pump out trash work to stay competitive.

[raincom]

DIY YouTubers read books, experiment, learn from others, and do extra-research. Most of the trades people are not doing any of that stuff. Almost all residential trades are poorly trained: many go to some trade school, get a job at a local contractor who doesn't want to further train. Unions are good at training; however, they want people to spend four years as an apprentice.

[weaksauce]

the DIY youtubers also know they will get a thorough drubbing in the comment section and may even lose subscribers if they do it to a poor level. the incentives for shortcuts on a job site by a worker are to get the job done(good enough for a layperson) and leave.

[rasz]

As soon as you learn enough you can start your own business and become the Boss client sees only twice :)

[conductr]

That’s kind of the problem, you don’t need to learn much at all/anything to do this right now. Because the bosses of the world aren’t enforcing any standards in terms of craftsmanship or quality of work. They pretty much just show up to see how much of a mess has been made and how quickly they can patch it up in order to ask for final payment or whatever is needed for completion

[c_o_n_v_e_x]

You're paying for:

- Trade licensing fees

- Liability insurance

- Medical insurance

- A vehicle to move equipment around

- Vehicle insurance

- Tools to complete the job

- The time taken to drive to your residence

- The time taken for the quote itself

- The expertise required to correctly spec/quote equipment

- The tradesperson driving to the city office

- The tradesperson applying AND paying for a city permit to do the work

- The tradesperson driving to a supply house

- Purchasing the equipment on credit

- Transporting the equipment back to your house

- Ripping out and disposing the old equipment (if applicable)

- The time and expertise to install the equipment correctly

- The time vacuum out the lineset

- The time charge the equipment properly with refrigerant

- The time commission the system and make sure it's running properly

- The tradesperson driving BACK to the customer house to be present for a city inspection

[conductr]

None of this explains why 10k of HVAC equipment would cost 40k to install, or most similar spreads. I've had over a dozen HVAC installations and it takes 2 guys a day even if they are doing multiple units on a 5000sf house. It takes them 2-3 days if it's a new build and needs ducts and everything. I've been a GC and built my own homes / managed subs / managed the build schedule / and personally replaced units on my older residences & rental properties.

All those big ticket items you mentioned are meant to provide shock and awe but when you break them down to their parts: 1 day of their license fee, 1 hour to drive to my residence, 1 day of vehicle cost/insurance, 1 hour driving to a supply house, 1 day of a equipment lease, they might amount to a couple thousand at most to the job itself. There's also a lot of efficiency they can find in them. For example, they stop at the supply shop on the way to the job site and bring the equipment with them on a trailer (3 birds one stone kind of thing). A lot of these things are also just included in the 2 day timeframe I've observed as being sufficient. There's going to be a part of the day where they are sitting in their truck while the lines charge or something like that.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

DIY also often has the benefit of being the only option when bureaucratic hurdles are in the way. Sometimes, approvals (from the government or from the landlord) are required, which can be hard, onerous, impossible or time-consuming to get.

Ignoring those requirements is often the most practical way with very limited negative consequences.

It also allows using much cheaper units - from what I've heard in Germany the unit (without the install cost!) will cost 2x as much when installed through an official installer compared to a high quality free-market option, but of course the installer will only install units sold through them so many people may be priced out of the legal route completely.

[tguvot]

in bay area, install costs for $2k unit are $6k-$8k (took multiple quotes. 3 years ago). very simple install in garage through the wall. "hardest" part was adding 240v disconnect (electrician did it for $300 or so).

[grepfru_it]

You don’t get the “full warranty” when you DIY hvac installs. You also need to call a licensed hvac tech to charge your system if it doesn’t come precharged. Mini splits are easy and I would 1000% DIY. Big, attic mount blower units I would leave to the pros for so many reasons. That said my cousin installed a 21 SEER unit for $5k. I was quoted $35k for the same system (:

[dpifke]

I haven't personally had need to do it (yet), but I know multiple people who got the EPA certification to be able to service their own equipment. It can be obtained by taking an online test.

https://www.epa.gov/section608/section-608-technician-certif...

[tguvot]

given installation price vs system price, it's possible to trash old one and buy a new few times for a price of professional install.

mrcool also has ducted units that comes with precharged/vacuumed lines. very tempting as one of my hvacs lives on extended timeline and quote for a new one was $25k 2 years ago

[mythrwy]

I did a 2 ton central air heat pump myself last spring with precharged lines. It was under $4K delivered, I was quoted over $10K.

It was a little scary, I had not done something like that before but a little research and it all turned out fine and has been working well.

[stego-tech]

> Old homes (if not historic) should get depreciated aggressively by the market to the point that knock downs make sense.

This doesn’t get shouted nearly enough. >90% of New England housing stock older than 30 years is not remotely worth the price they’re commanding. They’re either dumpster fires of knob-tube wiring and sagging floors, or contractor “spray foam specials” that make deliberate errors like the OP’s post points out. Yet because zoning laws are strongly tilted in favor of existing owners (and who are predominantly NIMBYs), it makes teardowns a costly affair on their own - and getting approval to build a new structure can take years, if at all.

Housing shouldn’t be disposable, but it should be readily replaceable with modern techniques and efficiency gains, provided it’s up to local code.

[SmellTheGlove]

I agree with you in principle, but 30 years is probably the wrong number. I have a house in coastal Maine, built in 1997. It's coming up on 30 years. I assure you, it's vastly different than the my first house (1941) or my last (1953), in good ways.

But to your point, we consider way too much to be "historic" and I'd like for that to change. You really should be able to tear down almost anything you'd like and rebuild as long as it's to code/zoning, and zoning needs to be cut back to things like dimensions and use, not appearance. Being old shouldn't make something eligible for historic preservation on its own.

[bluGill]

Code should be about fire safety for the fire department if it burns. if you can't build on the lot then it needs to be because of something there - or if they are planning to build it (a new utility) then they need to rebuy the easement every 10 years until they do. Height is limited only by airport flight lines.

everything else is none of your business. (Okay, I might have missed something but it is on those lines)

[cryptonector]

Height (number of units, really) is limited mainly by the bandwidth of the roads, water mains, and sewers in the area. These are things that are expensive, very expensive to expand. Of course in practice height is firstly limited by zoning to protect existing properties' owners, but you can't ignore the infrastructure needed for larger buildings.

[garciansmith]

In the United States something simply being old in no way makes it historic in any legal sense (e.g., contributing to a local historic district): integrity[1] matters if you are trying to legally deem a resource historic and worthy of some sort of preservation effort. Generally speaking buildings, structures, or objects need to be at least 50 years old, integrity aside (but there are exceptions if they are particularly noteworthy).

I tend to disagree with the need to tear stuff down just because it's old: it's so terribly wasteful. We need to get better at adapting, reusing, and adding on to older buildings. Granted, when developers just want to use the cheapest materials possible and build something that will start to have serious problems in 20 years, it's a problem, to say nothing of the loss of serious knowledge in various skilled trades.

[1] In most cases the National Register of Historic Places aspects of integrity are used for evaluation: integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.

[immibis]

The price you're paying is mostly for the land, not the house. Land is valuable because it's guaranteed to remain hoardable, closer to gold - it's something you can buy and just ignore while the price goes up.

[jghn]

mid-1800s in new england checking in. No knob in tube here, but guilty as charged on the sagging floors.

[brewtide]

I'm in the same boat. No knob and tune, and all the plaster has been removed as well (thankfully by someone else in the houses lifetime).

I've also DIY installed 3 mini split units in the house -- the last one being an AC / DC unit that directly gets powered via 4 panels on the roof during the sunny moments of the day.

Built a new addition 3-4 years back. It's far better insulated than the main structure, but the wood stove and heat pump combo keeps winter mostly at bay.

Anything over 30 years is insane.

[bboygravity]

How is a plain old AC suddenly considered "green tech" and renamed to "heat pump" in Europe?

[RatchetWerks]

It was already answered, but conventional AC systems have resistive heating elements which have a a max efficiency of 100 percent.

Heat pumps run an AC in reverse which can give a COP of 3-4. (300 to 400 percent efficiency)

or if actually burning fuel for heat. Could just remove the need for direct fuel burning altogether. Highly dependent on area, and associated costs. I recommend that you run the numbers for your area

[asteroidburger]

A heat pump is an air conditioner that can run in reverse. In the winter, it provides heat; summer, it provides cooling.

It's greener because it's not burning fossil fuels (directly, anyway) vs. a propane / natural gas furnace, and it's more efficient than resistive heating.

[balfirevic]

> A heat pump is an air conditioner that can run in reverse

Is this really the correct terminology? I'd say every AC is a heat pump, whether or not it can run in reverse, because that's how it works. It pumps heat from a colder place to a warmer place.

If it has been crippled so that it can't run in reverse, that's crappy and unfortunate, but it makes it no less of a heat pump.

[RatchetWerks]

According to the HVAC industry it is the correct term, based on my experience.

I agree with your logic both modes of operation (heat/cool) are both pumping heat.

Cripple is a fairly strong word here. HVAC is hyper optimized for cost/simplicity at the expense of comfort and efficiency. Which kills me. The industry is also stuck in the 80s in terms of power electronics. Variable speed control on the fans and compressors are a BIG deal. Like 20k for the gear. Even though the BOM cost is dirt cheap. Look at Carrier Infinity if you are curious

MANY Megawatts worth of power would be saved if they just included a directional valve, some speed control PCB and electronic expansion valve

[balfirevic]

> Cripple is a fairly strong word here.

Well... I'm in Europe, so I don't know if I ever saw a heat pump that can't operate both ways :-)

[asteroidburger]

Until recently, they've not been as common here in the US. Fossil fuels are just so much cheaper for the end customer, and central HVAC units in homes are much more common here.

[RatchetWerks]

The US is somehow very ahead and very behind at the same time :)

[toast0]

> If it has been crippled so that it can't run in reverse, that's crappy and unfortunate, but it makes it no less of a heat pump.

Yes, it pumps heat, but it's generally not referred to as a heat pump if it doesn't have a reversing valve and all the accoutrements that go with it (coil defrost heater, etc). I wouldn't say not having all those parts make it crippled, a refrigerator/freezer isn't crippled because it can't heat food, although some commercial units can be set to keep cold food cold or hot food hot because they have reversing valves.

If you have utility natural gas at reasonable prices, gas fired heat can be very economical, and it might not be forseable that you would ever use electricity for heating, in which case a reversing valve is a waste of capital.

[Brian_K_White]

Kind of a pointless observation.

The words "air conditioner" don't literally mean much at all. It doesn't refer to a humidifier or a hepa filter for instance, yet the term air conditioner has a distinct meaning that is silly to try to pretend not to recognize.

Same for heat pump.

[balfirevic]

I view "heat pump" as a technical term describing how some heaters/coolers/dehumidifiers/clothes driers/fridges work. Wikipedia seems to somewhat agree with me, although article about heat pumps seems focused on space heaters and coolers.

> yet the term air conditioner has a distinct meaning that is silly to try to pretend not to recognize

Well, yes, in US it apparently means "heat pump based space cooler". Where I live it means "heat pump based space heater and cooler".

[icehawk]

Its more complex to have a reversible heat pump, because in addition to the reversing valve, you also need two metering devices and a bypass for each of them.

[immibis]

Often "heat pump" refers to a reversible AC, which is not every AC, so they're not synonymous. In places where it's always too hot, or always too cold, no need to bother with the reversing option, just install it the way it'll always be used. In places that are typically an alright temperature, which means they're sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, you want it reversible.

[mythrwy]

I replaced my central air heat pump myself last spring. Outside unit and inside air exchange.

The inside unit happened to fit pretty well with a little adjustment in the place the old one (from the 1980s) had been, and I made my own connections to the ductwork. I placed the 2 ton outside unit on the pad where the old one had been. I did have an AC company come and remove the Freon from the old unit, then I cut it up and took it to the scrap yard.

I was able to do this with no vacuuming lines as they sell precharged kits with lines similar to mini splits. It's been over a year and it worked like a charm through summer and winter. It took about 5 days or a week including removing the old unit, pulling the lines under the house, setting the inside and outside units and buttoning everything up. The reason it even took a week was a I did it entirely myself including moving the units with roller logs.

I saved over $6,000 from what I was quoted from an HVAC company which I felt was entirely worth a week of manual labor.

[SmellTheGlove]

How did you charge your unit? Did you learn how to do that and get the EPA certificate or did you convince someone to come out and do that?

[tguvot]

There are minisplits that are precharged. For example mrcool. Very easy installation. No need to vacuum anything

Have few friends who got certificates in order to charge their

[RatchetWerks]

Great question. The unit is pre charged for 25 feet of lineset . I was right at the limit for my install.

I installed the lines, did all the vacuum related work. Then just cracked the valve on the unit to distribute the refrigerant.

I had a bottle of refrigerant on standby from a buddy. Didn’t need to use it . I was going to get the EPA cert, if my buddy didn’t exist. I heard it’s super straightforward

[0xbadcafebee]

The vacuum work, finding/fixing leaks, etc can be a real nightmare, even with the expensive equipment. Personally I would much rather pay an HVAC technician to just come and pull the vacuum. They already have the gear, and they can diagnose when your vacuum still doesn't pull all the way for the 3rd time. Then if you don't get a precharged unit, they can also fill it.

[alliao]

that is IF the technician cares enough... unless you guys have stringent regulatory/right incentives in place. sometimes tech just relies on the brand reputation and pull for 10mins calls it a day

[rjsw]

Your link to the Mitsubishi support site doesn't seem correct.

[RatchetWerks]

I just checked the link. I believe it is correct. The domain name looks sketchy, but it has all the nitty gritty engineering data.

If I remember correctly, I think I found a link from the actual Mitsubishi website linking to it

[rjsw]

Did you try connecting to the server?

A Google search on the hostname does return entries for Mitsubishi, DNS points to AWS.

[RatchetWerks]

Yes. I might be missing something obvious. Are we talking about the my link drive website? If so, yes. I clicked the link from my website and it took me straight to the website with no issue.

I might be misunderstanding something

[balfirevic]

If we're talking about https://mylinkdrive.com/USA/M_Series I also can't access it, I get:

  This site can’t be reached
  Check if there is a typo in mylinkdrive.com.
  DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

[RatchetWerks]

Hmmmm. That’s is VERY odd. That links resolves fine in my phone . I’m US based. I wonder if they have some sort of geo blocking

[cjrp]

Fails in the UK.

[triyambakam]

> depreciated

Sorry but it's deprecated

[atombender]

Depreciate means to lower the estimated value of something. Pretty sure that's what GP meant. "Deprecate" doesn't fit here.

[triyambakam]

Oh you're right, I misread :(