It's kind of funny, I don't get intimidated very easily
these days,
but I'm going to be trying to replace my AC
system at my house
and I do find this intimidating.
However, I'm going to be going with a Mr.
Cool unit and I've worked with them for many years
now in their mini split line.
I've been sold like four of their units,
but they say it's DIY wolf and it is,
and so therefore I am trusting them to make this
system just as easy.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to go
through the process,
replace my condenser, replace my air handler,
replace the line set and then whatever I learned,
I'm going to pass it on to you guys so
that if you have an AC unit on the frets
like what I do,
you'll be able to do a
DIY install should you feel up to the task.
So let's get into it.
The first thing I'm going to know if you have
a conventional AC system,
if there's three main components,
you're going to continuously hear me reference in this video.
There's going to be the condenser which is going to
be outside of the house.
There's going to be the air handler which is going
to be inside the house,
and then there's going to be the line set which
connects the two.
Now the condenser should be very easy to find.
It the big box thing with the fan on it
somewhere outside.
But depending if you're in the north or the South
we'll determine kind of where in the house your air
gamer is going to be.
Most of the time in Texas ours are in the
attic,
but it could be in a closet.
If you were up north and you are lucky enough
to have basement,
they might be in the basement
by code. Every single one has a disconnect box by
the unit.
So go find the condenser,
the outside unit and find the breaker for it.
Turn it off which is
mine's inside the house. Then you have a disconnect box
here
to the unit and just to be double double safe
you can pull the disconnect
just to be double double safe that everything is off
because then the first step is going to be to
disconnect the line set and the electrical components to the
condenser. Now moving down here,
these lines are charged with something called refrigerant.
And the way that you get rid of that is
you call an HVAC guy and they will come out
and capture it.
And that way it doesn't go and get into the
atmosphere.
Now that I've already done that,
I can go through and just start disconnecting these lines,
which is the line set as well as the electrical.
I'm just double checking that
it is indeed off. This is the third check.
So yes it is. This part's kind of easy if
everything's disconnected.
It's just a bunch of twisting,
twisting off and yanking out.
Oh yeah,
that copper is super easy to cut.
Now
you're only cutting the line set.
Don't cut the high voltage or the low voltage.
Anything electrical, don't cut only the line set.
Now that this is all disconnected,
I think the normal thing next would be to move
this out of the way so that you can put
your new condenser on the same pad site.
However, I'm going with a a different unit this one
here,
and it has a slightly longer footprint and I would
need to remake that pad and I also have plans
for this entire area.
So I've decided to move my condenser to this area
of my porch instead.
I kind of geek out on new technology so I
can actually be a little long winded here,
but I'm going to try to consolidate this into four
points on why I like this unit over that one.
First, small footprint, absolutely love things condensed down.
Second is the vertical nature.
On those horizontal units, you have to worry about leaves,
and in the northern climate,
snow collecting on top the vertical completely eliminates that.
Third, let's just pause and listen.
You hear the birds, you hear the leaves.
It's really important to me to be able to hear
those things.
This unit is extremely loud.
This is going to be half as loud.
And then finally, the 4th is this new technology.
Well, at least to me,
it's new to me. This is a heat pump,
which means that during the summer it's not operate the
same as my old units where it's going to expel
all heat found in the air outside of the house,
but during winter is going to steal heat from the
air and then put it into my house,
making it ultra efficient and I should be able to
see major cost savings.
Now typically heat pumps are known for not working very
well whenever it gets to temperatures near freezing.
We don't have to worry about that too often here
in Texas,
but I know that you Northerners do.
So know that this Mr.
Cool heat pump unit is rated for
-22°, so even people in North Dakota and Minnesota should
be able to use that.
All right,
let's go up to the attic and see about getting
air handler to the next agent.
Now I'm in my attic and looking this is my
air return line.
My filters are placed here.
All of that's going to stay from here to here
is the actual air handler
system that I'm going to be replacing.
Here's the line set that comes in.
So again, I'm just going to cut those off.
This is a condensate line.
So inside here is coils and they're just like a
cold beverage to where it's going to sweat and drip
water.
All of that goes into the drip pan and then
it gets into this line and goes out.
So this is not actually put together to where I
can unscrew it.
So I'm just going to cut this line off
and then my electrical is behind this panel.
I again found the breaker,
which is probably going to be separate from the condenser.
In your case, it was in my case and I
flipped it for this unit.
So I'm going to unscrew the panel,
I'm going to check the wires to make sure that
it is disconnected,
and then I'm going to disconnect those as well.
I can't pull out the main high voltage line because
all of this low voltage which actually goes to the
thermostat is binding it up.
So I'm just going to unscrew all of these wire
nuts
and disconnect this low voltage.
Another thing that I disconnected was the float on my
drain pan down here
and this is just so that if this pan over
floods with water
then it will kick off the system.
Which by the way if you're going to be working
on your AC.
Mine used to not have this.
This overfilled flooded my attic causing a bunch of drywall
issues downstairs.
So if you're going to be looking at this any
anyways,
make sure that your pan has a float and that
it's actually hooked up.
All right, Now that I have all of these disconnected
it should be able to pull out this high voltage
line.
Perfect. All right. With that done,
I now should be able to cut the
condensation line and the line set.
Check your condensation line because it might be set up
to where
it can be backed off.
My people just glued it in place.
I'm just going to cut it.
So this is the condensate.
This is line set and then we have all electrical
now disassembled.
Looking here, I have something called duct board,
which is fiberglass. A different thing that you might have
is metal that's fastened together with screws.
But the general concept here is that I need to
get the air handler separated from my ductwork,
and so in my case it looks like I'm going
to be able to do that by simply pulling this
taping off.
Over here it looks like I have a few screws
that's also a simple
simple thing to undo. Now this
is where my filters are.
I want to keep that.
I'm just going to rip out this tape and see
if that'll allow this unit to come free.
Oh yeah, feel free.
OK, how am I going to get this out of
the attic?
I guess that way. So what I'm going to do
to give myself a little bit more working space as
I cut both the line set one,
the line set's going to go away,
but the condensate, I'm actually going to have to reinstall,
but I cut it back here just to give myself
more working space over there and I'll add a coupler
later on.
Let's try to wrestle this thing out of place.
Now that I am to this little platform,
hopefully you have more space.
I'm going to disassemble this because there it won't fit
through there,
so I'm going to take it down in pieces.
So then what remains? This is my air return,
this is my filter box and that's the rest of
my ductwork.
So now I need to get the new air handler
in
this little section. Just like I couldn't get my old
unit down in one piece,
I also couldn't get my new unit up in one
piece.
You won't have this issue if yours isn't in the
attic.
Everything was easy to take apart and get up except
the piece called the A coil.
It is a very tight fit in between here,
so I called in reinforcements in order to help me
get it up here.
Jacob's going to bring it in,
pass it to Gary. They're going to try to walk
it up the ladder.
Pass it up to me.
If we need to take these off,
then we'll do that. If I need to take this
jam off,
we can do that. OK,
do you want to try to shimmy the vowels up
first?
Like what you said? Like angle it?
It won't fit through here.
One option is that we could take out the jam,
but then we have to pull the ladder.
No option two. I have been wanting an access panel
to my roof so that I could *
gaze. So I feel like it's a really great time
to
cut in a panel. Then I'll be able to get
the A coil into my attic And then
I have my stargazing platform 2 for one.
Let's cuddle hole in the wall.
Let's go.
Come on, be impressive.
Don't think you have to cut a hole in your
attic.
You could just be a normal person and remove the
door jamb.
But I am not normal.
Instead, I look forward to building an exterior door to
my roof.
All right, so this is the reassembled air handler.
So to give you reference,
this is that a coil?
This is the motor, and then just how to make
a few connections.
Now we need to work it over there
where the old one was
without tearing up any of my dusting.
Talk about making me feel powerful.
My goodness,
now that the air handler is in place in the
attic,
I need to connect it to the condenser down here.
The underside of that porch roof is actually the attic
that I'm going to cut a hole in and then
chase the line set down the side of the house
to the new condenser. All right,
line set air handler is in the attic right above
us.
I'm going to drill a hole to run the line
set from up to down where the condenser is.
I'm going to take a sawzall and cut this trim
so that I have a flat
pathway for the line set and then I'm going to
use a hole saw in order to drill two holes.
All right, now it is time to connect the 2
units the air handler to the condenser outside.
I'm starting off with the larger line set and I
just set the coil there.
This is where that whole exits out.
So I'm going to be running it down there.
I'm actually going to ask somebody to feed this down
to me.
I'm going to run downstairs and be chasing it all
the way down to the condenser.
And then after running this one,
I'm going to come back with the smaller heat pump
side and do the exact same thing.
So I'm not worried about running it on the side
of my house because they make these attachments that I'm
going to attach this run online set on front of
it and then there is this cover that will cover
it up and then I'll paint this to match the
house or I'll just leave it since it matches the
trim.
So
here, all right,
now I just need to do that one more time
with the small line,
all right? To make these connections.
One of the biggest unique factors of Mr.
Cool is that their lines,
their line set is pre charged so that you don't
need special equipment to pressurize it and to charge the
line or to have to have a professional come out
with that. There is like some special valves in these
that doesn't release it
until you have it hooked up.
So this section goes down here
in order to make the connections they ship with the
fittings.
I'm going to hook up the big one first taking
off the
thread protectors that comes with the unit.
OK, that's the endpoint. So now I can rinse my
repeat on the other end.
All right, final step on this.
Now that I have these connected and tightened down,
the A coil comes precharged,
the line set comes precharged,
there is a screw valve and both of these fittings
that separates the two.
So I'm going to go ahead and open up the
flood.
I mean open up the dam,
just a little screw valve in there.
OK. Sounds fully backed out.
OK,
that sounds like success. Everything in the attic is now
done.
All of the wiring it's taken most of the day
really. The thermostat wiring is just a little bit tricky.
So now I have the outside main power wiring to
this condenser and then this whole project is going to
be a wrap.
So now we can Fast forward.
I've made all of my connections the line set here.
You can see that it comes with this insulation for
the very bottom and then I just use some foil
tape in order to connect the two.
I also hooked up the main powers going from my
pre-existing power box over here.
Now if you're going to be doing one of these
projects is inevitable that you're going to have a hole
in your house somewhere that you need to fill.
And what I like to use is this barrier by
DAP,
it's a multi project foam.
The thing that sets the DAP 1 apart is that
rats and mice won't chew through this.
Okay,
let's go up to the attic
now after getting the new air handler in the position
of the old one.
Then it was just a matter of connecting everything.
Let's go through component at a time.
The wiring I took photos before taking it apart so
that I could just make the same connections.
I did make sure that I wired in my float
to the low voltage and my thermostat is there working
over this way.
The line set connected the exact same way as I
connected the line set downstairs.
Then I just put on the insulation going down to
the condensate line.
This is something interesting that an AC friend told me
to do.
I've had my attic flood before and it's because this
gets the condensate line,
gets clogged and backs up and then what happens is
typically the bottom of the case floods and then it
starts overflowing into this pan.
When that happens, this float is supposed to kick on
and then shut the entire system off.
My previous float was not ever wired in,
it was on the pan but not wired in.
So that's why it's important to have the flow to
make sure that it's working properly.
But my AC friend said
throw in a second line so that you can see
here
it's just one that empties directly into the pan.
So that way if the first condensate line backs up
or clogs or isn't working for some reason,
instead of having to flood the bottom side of the
air handler first before going to the pan,
the second line will just automatically start working.
Now moving over to connecting the air handler to the
previous ductwork.
One thing that I ran into is you can see
my new air handler is much more tall than my
previous unit.
This one used to connect just right here where this
filter box is.
Most important thing about this connection is that you have
an airtight seal.
What I had to do is create a sheet metal
cap if you will,
to block off the additional height that my new unit
has over my previous.
So that's what this is.
And then you can see I just secured it with
some screws along the top in this front face.
Now the important thing is to go back and again
make an airtight.
There's two methods that I think that are on the
market.
One is a foil tape which is just a peel
and stick method.
The other one is this.
It's a brush on seal to where you can go
to the big box store.
So just know that whenever you reconnect this joint,
you can see I've already started.
So I'll come back here and
seal up this joint here and then also this joint.
OK, All in all guys,
it is taking me 3 days to complete this project,
which I I accounted for.
I didn't want to be rushed for doing this.
I wanted to be able to take my time.
So I waited until the time of year that I
could shelf my AC for three days and just really
focus on this job.
Now if you're tackling this,
know that if you get one of these kits and
are willing to go through the obstacles and each small
stuff that accumulates into the big accomplishment,
it will save you thousands of dollars.
And I don't think it it gets much easier than
the kit that Mister Cool has put together for you.
Each individual thing is very simple,
connecting the line set, doing the simple plumbing for the
condensate line of
connecting the old air handler to the existing.
If anything holds you up,
know that you could still save yourself thousands of dollars
by tackling the vast majority of this job and then
call in an HVAC guy to do the odds and
ends, such as the thermostat wiring,
which is pretty tricky in order to completely wrap it
up for you.
So I really hope that this video has helped you
out should you be considering this job and I'll see
you on whatever I'm tackling next.
Oh, and if you're worried about the hole in my
attic,
that's going to be a different project.