Fitting your own air con unit?

[HappyHippyDad]

I have a large gym in the garden and it gets ridiculously hot in the summer.

I have utilised pretty much every inch of space and do not want to put a plug in air con unit that sits on the floor as it would just be in the way.

What puts me off a wall unit is the fact you have to get an F-gas registered engineer to fit and these guys are quite expensive. I would like to do it myself.

I have seen this unit Buy electriQ Easy-Fit 12000 BTU A++ WiFi Smart Wall-Mounted Split Air Conditioner with Heat Pump and 4.5-Meter Pipe Kit from Aircon Direct - https://www.aircondirect.co.uk/p/865335/1000-btu-panasonic-powered-easy-fit-inverter-wall-split-air-conditioner-with-5-meters-pipe-kit-and-5-years-warranty
which states it does not need an F-gas engineer to install.

Does anyone have any experience with these units? Are they equally as good as the ones that contain fluorinated gases?

Any other clever ideas?

 

[Mike Johnson]

I'm with @brianmoooore on this, fitted two units, one to my office, other to my workshop, both where pre-gassed and only needed to be fitted together, piping between available in various lengths to suit your installation, they are off the shelf units in Brico Depots and LeroyMerlin in France, but as with all legislation in France no one takes any notice of the warnings about only to be fitted by qualified gas fitters, where have I heard that before?

 

[Marvo]

These types of self install air con units come with a detailed installation guide aimed at an average DIY'er.

The gas is R290 which is flamable propane so take sensible precations but the amount of gas in the unit is very small compared to air conditioners using traditional refrigerants.

Usually vacuuming of pipework on a brand new system isn't strictly necessary as long as all the pipework was kept sealed till the last minute and you don't install it on a rainy day where moisture or high humidity could get into joints and pipes. Often the instructions get you to purge a little refrigerant through the pipes before you tighten the last fitting to remove any holding nitrogen charge or air from the pipes which is non-condensable.

The pipework will come with the ends already flared and ready to fit. This means you won't need a flaring tool but as already mentioned above the down side is the pipes are always a bit long making it difficult to find somewhere to lose the spare and still make it look neat.

 

[brianmoooore]

the down side is the pipes are always a bit long making it difficult to find somewhere to lose the spare and still make it look neat.

I positioned the indoor and outdoor units to suit the length of the supplied pipes.

 

[oscar21]

The problem with not vacuuming out though is if any air at all is in the pipework then it will have moisture in it and once the refrigerant is released the moisture will freeze and block the pipework/condensor etc.

The interesting bit is how the moisture is actually removed, its not by just sucking it out with a vac pump, the pump reduces the air pressure inside the system to almost nothing which means that the water/moisture will boil at the ambient temperature and then it gets sucked out as a gas.

 

[Marvo]

If the pipes are kept sealed the moisture from any air ingress during connecting would be minimal and the air con system has a filter dryer that has dessicant in it which can remove any trace amounts of moisture. Also with air conditioning you can get away with it because usually you're evaporating several degrees above freezing so a small amount of moisture wouldn't cause a blockage.

Problem with cheapie Chinese vacuum pumps is that many of them won't pull down to anywhere near 500 microns and unless you spend even more money on a half decent vacuum gauge you'll never know.

If this unit is aimed at DIY installation the manufacturers installation instructions won't require a vaccum to be pulled, only a quick purge probably. If for some reason you do need to vacuum I wouldn't recommend the cheap vacuum pumps on Amazon or EBay, rather just use that money and pay a refrigeration guy to do the vacuuming and commissioning.

 

[plugsandsparks]

Dont want to appear pedantic, but Fgas regs (which are statutory) dont allow using Fgases to push air, residual N2 and moisture out of the system. OK R290 is basically propane, but it is a small charge so using some of it to purge does appear a bit odd. Anyway this is getting like a DIY thread for electricians, Fgases are dangerous, you need to be competent and legally qualified to work on Fgases. Ha ha never thought i would be saying that, lol
Good Luck, BTW, please use a glove when purging with Fgas as it can really hurt

 

[Mikegh]

How risky is it for a retired spark fitting one of those mini-split units in my own place ?

Don't fancy doing anything dodgy with gas

 

[pirate]

I fitted one of those exact units along with a pal as he needed it for his office.
It was a simple, straight-forward task as it was pre-charged and the pipework was pre-assembled. The trick is to order the length of pipework to suit, better too long, and then position the outdoor unit accordingly. It was a day's work, and works extremely well. Also, the supplier was very helpful on the phone when we had a couple of queries.
The hardest part was drilling the outside wall, and that's not exactly difficult. The quality of the kit is impressive.

 

[Aaron b]

I went out to a couple of the diy style AC units back in the day. One I remember the PCB was showing a fault code, the technical team had no idea what they meant and replaced the whole condensing unit. Others had leaks on the premade flared joints.

The old boys used to just purge a bit of gas through.

That was before they updated the safe gas handling course unfortunately. I think I could make a fair bit fixing heat pumps if I had the updated quals. @plugsandsparks how long was the f gas course?