DUCTLESS MINI-SPLIT INSTALLATION

There's no ductwork to design on a mini-split, which sounds like it makes the job simpler and mostly means the decisions move earlier. Nearly everything that determines how the system feels a year from now gets settled in the first hour, standing in the room with you.

Walking the room with you

We want to know how the space gets used and when. A garage with an uninsulated door, a west-facing wall and an afternoon shift happening in it is a different job from a bedroom of the same size that's only occupied at night. Ceiling height, insulation, glass and the spot where the outdoor unit can reasonably sit all get settled on the same walk, because the line set has a length the system is rated for and that quietly limits where a head can go.

Sizing each head to the room it serves

Oversizing is a common mini-split mistake here, and it doesn't fail the way people expect. An inverter head that's too large for its room doesn't blow the doors off. It drops to its minimum capacity, satisfies the room anyway, and cycles. Long, low, unhurried runs are what pull moisture out of the air in this climate, so an oversized head leaves the space cold and damp rather than cool and dry, and drags the indoor air quality down with it.

Where the head goes and how the lines get there

Placement decides how a room feels more than the badge on the cover does. We mount the head so the throw covers the space instead of pushing air into the back of a couch, and plan the wall core and the line route before anything is screwed to a wall. Line sets get covered rather than left bare down the side of the house. Outside, the condenser goes where it has room to breathe, off the hottest wall when the house allows it, and not under a bedroom window.

Vacuum and charge

Mini-splits arrive with a factory charge held in the outdoor unit and sized for a standard line length, so this isn't the same job as charging a split system from empty. We evacuate the line set and the indoor coil, release the factory charge into the system, and add refrigerant for the extra length when the run is longer than that charge was meant to cover.

Starting up each zone

We run every zone and measure the temperature split off each head rather than trusting what the remote says. On a standard multi-zone system the heads share one mode, so each room can sit at its own temperature but they'll all be heating or all be cooling, which is worth knowing while the zones are still on paper. Then we sit down with the remote and show you how to drive it, because a single-zone head left on one setting all year is doing half its job.

Keeping it running

Mini-splits are low maintenance, not no maintenance. The washable filter in each head wants rinsing every few weeks, and that part is yours. An annual tune-up handles the rest: measuring the refrigerant charge, checking and tightening the electrical connections, and inspecting the coil and blower wheel for the buildup a filter rinse never reaches. That's the same checkup our maintenance agreements run on a ducted system, and it's worth asking about while we're quoting the install.