Mr Cool DIY 24K Mini Split Heat Pump and Air Conditioner Installation in the BARNDOMINIUM

welcome to from scratch ranch where we're building this ranch from scratch doing as much as we can diy starting with this whole barnum and we need heating and cooling so i got this mr cool diy unit it's the 24k which should cool and heat about a thousand square feet that's perfect for our barnum we're right around just over a thousand square feet but it's open space so it should be fine so in this video we'll go through the process of what we did to install this thing and see how easy it really is to install as a diy project and if you're interested in something like this hopefully you'll get a good idea if this is the right thing for your barn dominion or your house or your garage your workshop or whatever it may be and if something that you can do and feel confident in doing so with that let's get started [Music] so this is the third generation do-it-yourself model heat pump and air conditioner energy star efficient the high efficiency 20 sear and the model number for the controller unit is the diy 24 hp in case you were interested one thing i really like about this too is it comes with a smart controller and the app that you can control the heat and air with perfect for this high-tech homestead and barnum works with alexa and google this is what makes this a diy system it's a pre-charged refrigerant line which means i can connect this up without any special tools or skills or anything i just need to connect this end to the indoor unit and this other end to the outdoor unit so it's as simple as that make sure it doesn't leak this is supposedly 25 feet i'm going to unroll it here measure it and actually string it up and see if this is going to be enough for my need because my outdoor unit and my indoor unit are about 25 feet apart so before i cut the hole in the wall i'm just going to make sure it's going to fit otherwise i'm going to have to probably move the location of my indoor unit to be a little closer that looks pretty long this is the shop side of the barn dominium where michaela's loft is up there and the unit the indoor unit is going to be on the inside of that wall right there above that switch so i need to figure out if i have enough line to come from there down this wall here and out through this exterior wall here to the the compressor which is sitting on the pad right out there so straight shot up and down this is 16 feet tall this is 10 feet wide for this loft space so that's 16 plus 10 that's 26 if i was to go like in an l shape and out so i'm gonna have to probably go at an angle down here and run it down and out to the unit so hopefully that should be enough to get 25 feet we'll see [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so out of two by fours i just built a form to pour a concrete in these are 40 inches in length and then i cut 27 inches on these sides here because i need the interior to be 24 inches so the inch and a half inch and a half for 27 inches so now i've got a 24 by 40 inch pad concrete pad that i'm going to pour to set the outside unit on this doesn't need to be totally perfect but so so this is two feet by basically two feet by three and a half feet or so so roughly around seven square feet four inches thick so the table for how much this is gonna cover it's about six fifty pound bags it says we'll see it seems like a lot for this area but we'll see how it turns out [Applause] i don't have a cement mixer to mix all this by hand so i'm hoping it doesn't really take six bags [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so so we're at the top of the stairs of my daughter's loft up here we're gonna install the indoor unit right up here above this dresser so that way it will blow with the the louvers down below kind of directing it out this way the output for the refrigerant line on a template is over here and i need to string it that way and down to the outside it can be reversed apparently to come out this side there really is no reason to change this to come out the other side because it's not going to show anyways it's behind the unit so it'll go straight out the back and then down on the outside in the shop area uh down towards the exterior wall that way so we're gonna go ahead and put this template up find the studs mark my markings and we'll cut our hole in the wall and get everything installed all right so now i'm gonna find my studs all right so i'm good right here and then probably 16 inches this way yep right there good and that looks like that's gonna line up perfect for there so this one will be on a stud and then i'll have to use maybe that screw there and then i'll put some anchors in so i'm just marking where the six inch mark is on that black line so i know where to put this template back up five inch i'm gonna just tape this in place lightly i don't have any blue painters tape which would be ideal here so i'm just going to lightly tape that up there see if i'm level might be easier so this is where i need to drill my three and a half inch hole i need to drill a hole for this piece to go through so it's a three and a half inch and this will allow all the refrigerant lines and wires to go through here go through the wall so you just need to line up the drill bit in the center it's the right size and i'm looking at the back side of the wall right in the middle i look like i've got a double stud there and then on that light switch box i've got a stud to the left of it when i'm facing the other way all right so i went behind and i double checked this out this light switch here is actually a triple gang box it's pretty wide and the stud is on the left side of it so it actually comes right through here my stud finder didn't i didn't check that i guess so because the stud is on the left hand side of this box i cannot put the hole here and there's not enough room for me to move this template to the right or to the left to get around that stud because there's just not enough room here so i'm going to have to put the hole on this side and exit out the wall this way so i need to drill the hole on this side i'm glad i checked that because if i drilled my hole through there i would have hit the stud and hit those wires and maybe i'll check for the stud here also nothing there it should be right about there there it is good [Music] [Music] showing the insulation behind it good nothing in my way take a screw here and i'm going to mark behind the wall that's that mounting bracket comes factory kind of mounted to the unit itself just with this one shipping screw so i'll remove that and remove the mounting plate here okay and release there's little tabs in here to release okay i just realized that this template is not the same as the actual bracket i have as you can see here this doesn't line up and the hole that i just marked does not line up with this bracket now the total width is correct so i think i'm okay i just need to adjust since i gotta have the coolant line coming out this way it looks it appears that this comes out to make more room i'm assuming that's why it's at the drain these instructions have been not been that good so then i have more room to have this come out this way can make those connections here all right i'm not using the screws they gave me i'm using my own they're a little bit longer the ones they sent with the kit were kind of small i thought in my opinion so i just made sure it was level now i'm getting into this stuff here cut through the insulation here's the hole i cut and i need to put some drywall on this side and i don't have time to put a full piece up so i'm going to just kind of piece this in for now and then i can tape a mud around it later after i add more drywall okay all done i just need to drill a hole for there i'm gonna go through the other side and mark it and drill it from this side but the reason i put this up here not a full sheet because i'm like way up here i'm 16 feet up in the air and i'm not gonna do that right now i just put that drywall on the other side there i'm gonna take my hole saw and go all the way through okay so i'm going to angle it down just so it's a little bit lower and cut my hole okay [Music] there's my sleeve i'll go measure the other side not to cut it i'm gonna mark it so i know where to cut it so that this cap can go on it [Music] wow that's tough i showed cutting it with a knife but i think i'm going to need to cut it with a saw okay so the instructions weren't that clear i think my instructions are the wrong instructions so they haven't been updated for this newer model uh the instructions say something about some codes on here a b c d and a 1 2 3 4 or whatever to line everything up there was no such thing this is also all copper so it's definitely different so the only way i knew which end to connect this to or i'm guessing is because this this end the black is longer than the gray and then the connecting end on the inside unit the the black is shorter and the gray is longer so it's a good match up like that where on the other end they are the equal lengths so that would hook up to the outdoor unit perfectly because they're the same outside so it's a good guess it makes sense so now what i'm going to do is hook the gray gray and black to black first using my hands to tighten it on and then i'll use two wrenches and you're supposed to use a torque wrench but all the instructions i've seen no one's actually using a torque wrench so just two two rent two crescent wrenches or adjustable wrenches or whatever you may have but definitely two because it needs to go one needs to hold each side so it doesn't twist inside kind of bend these to fit okay i think i've got that as tight as i can with my hands now i need these two wrenches okay i think i'm finally at the end that's as tight as i can get it that was a long way to go now this one's a little smaller so i can use these two adjustable wrenches where the other one it was too big and i couldn't i didn't have an adjustable wrench big enough to fit that one side okay now i'll check for leaks using soapy water okay i've confirmed that there are no leaks so now i need to hook the drain tube i can find here we go to the drain just need to figure out which end is which that's right all right the other end all stuff through here now supposed to go on the bottom once this is all done on as tight as possible so it doesn't leak okay and just enough so i can tape all this together and i also have the power that i also need to feed through okay so all the power comes from the outdoor unit that's where i actually have the main power source feed it fed to so power needs to be on the top um especially if it like there is a leak or something you don't want it to fit onto the power cord next it came with these sound dampening pads pretty thick stuff like a rubber or something sticky it's heavy too to go over the quick connect i guess this completely seals it off too so no air hits it i guess maybe cause corrosion or something not quite sure now i'm definitely not a professional at any of this this is my first time doing anything like this so if i'm doing something wrong well i guess call me out and blame mr cool for writing bad instructions so i re-wrapped the foam around it got that nice and tidied up and i came with some extra foam to then also wrap around the exposed parts and the kit also came with a few rolls of this vinyl tape to tidy everything up together it's not even sticky okay don't make the mistake i did where i put this through the hole without making sure this was aligned right this wire is supposed to actually go up over the water hose drain hose back behind here and behind the refrigerant lines so i had it coming this way and that's not acceptable so i need to feed this through here like so and one of the reasons is because i'm actually putting this out the other side so it's not the default setting here so i just need to feed it through here then tape it and then push it through i just got some regular vinyl black electrical tape that i'm going to use to tape all this together and then i'm going to wrap it with that vinyl tape that was provided vinyl tape is actually not really a tape it's it's not adhesive at all so i'm assuming it's just wrap it as tight as possible and tape it off at the end with something else i was a little surprised by that i thought it would be adhesive but maybe not okay let's see if this works everything's bound and ready to go i'm gonna push this over this way push more through the hole and hopefully this will seat into here and then i can lift it up and clip it in onto the mounting bracket this is going to be a little awkward more just to make sure i don't knock anything over help has arrived okay just kind of make sure this thing doesn't fall over or you're kind of close to the other yeah i don't want to step it up so pull it back towards you okay okay i'm going to try and push more into the hole here okay now i'm going to back what is this that's the top so i need to lift it up and hopefully okay let's set it back down see this is in the way okay well it's kind of hooked up there but all of this is i don't like the fact that i had to come out to the left-hand side here that's the problem i think the top is hooked in good but to get it to hook on the bottom all of this piping in here needs to tuck in inside and that is really difficult at this angle [Music] so the instructions weren't very clear on this but since i had to reverse the direction to come out on the left hand side and it's coming across the back here on the inside and out through that hole there i think that's what this is for a cutout possibly because i'm having a hard time getting this to sit up in there right so i'm going to go ahead and just cut it out anyways this is up against in this corner it's not going to show even if it does come out a little bit so i'm gonna cut this out and see what happens okay well it's a nice clean cutout okay so i got that hopefully that'll make this easier to fit in there so before i do that i need to put this neoprene stuff this into the hole to make that airtight i'll probably even throw some insulation on the other side in there all right here we go so far so good it seems like it's fitting a little bit better next step is to take this line refrigerant line drain and cable electrical cable down and out the wall through here because i'm going to come outside and come to the exterior unit right there so i'm going to put a hole in the wall right here and i'm going to put it right above here just so it has this to rust on oh and i want to make sure i'm in between the ribs okay so these ribs here i want to come in between them i don't want to come in the middle of our rib so there's the rib there so i want to make sure i'm kind of like right in the middle so whatever flashing i put on the outside too will fit i have a hole in my building all right looks good now i wish i had some kind of sleeve to put in there to support this so it doesn't get cut by the metal and i don't so i'm gonna have to make something up here real quick perfect this is the part that i cut off the end of the interior one that i used since i've got you know two kind of exteriors i actually needed another one of those sleeves so i'm just gonna use the part i cut off to just kind of put there as like a tunnel to provide a safer environment for this line to go through without it damaging the foam or any parts of it on that sharp metal okay i'm gonna slowly now that's not going to stay so i think i'm just going to bring in exactly what i need bring out exactly what i need so that the rest will be inside [Music] okay i think that's good now we just need to make these connections so now that i got everything lined up right just need to remove this call it a rain tray or something okay okay so now we just got to take off these two caps supposed to do this like right before you go to put these on i got the now this i guess this is important but we're supposed to tighten the bottom one first first i'm gonna put it on by hand thread it on just a couple turns until it bites not forcing anything okay top one so just enough to so you can feel it it won't go further by hand it just kind of gets on there once it bites okay i think i finally got it yep i got that okay now i need to tighten the bottom first i guess that was important to note the bottom first gets tightened there's not a whole lot of room in here to do this it's basically a quarter turn at a time oh i guess that's it that's ties it'll go okay now the top this one's bigger so i'm gonna have to use that to hold that side flip it around and use the adjustable wrench on this one it fits on this one but it won't fit on the other nut [Music] ah almost there another quarter turn okay good we're all connected next unbolt these two caps and then the allen wrench valve need to turn that on and then we'll test for leaks so i'm just putting some soapy water to see if it bubbles up i'm not seeing anything i think it's a good solid connection okay now we'll pull the caps off okay there's a certain order that this has to be done top first then bottom so we connected the bottom first and tighten that then the top now we want to open the valve on the top and then the bottom here we go top first okay i hear the gas flowing through so i open this all the way up until it doesn't turn anymore so it's turning quite a few turns it's set until turn it until it stops okay there it is it's all the way out now the bottom one and put our caps back on a little bit of a tighten them up just a little bit [Music] okay now electrical ac off okay there we go so now i have my whip here 10 gauge now we'll go right into that slot right here pop out this plug these are the grounds here now this is the the other end of the wire going up into the inside unit and i'm going to tape all this together once i'm done so i do have a shut off out here and it was already off okay so i've got my wire my whip wire up and in i just secured all this in i got my ground and now i've got my red and black one on each side except to unscrew the nut there screw and then push this up and there's a little hole up in there just get it up in there and then tighten that screw down on top of it and then the same thing on the other side now this one's a 10 gauge 30 30 amp and so it's two hot wires in one ground and so the red and black are both hot the green is the ground so i've got the two wires coming from the panel two hot wires two blacks and uh that feed that okay so we're all wired up there put the cover back on okay here we go ac is off now i'm gonna turn on and we'll see what happens [Music] all looks good we are juiced all right we got everything hooked up and we're ready to power this thing up and see what it can do it came with a remote control and a handy dandy holder that you can screw onto the wall and on the remote control i put the batteries in and right away it automatically just says what the temperature is 76 degrees in here and there's various settings there's an on off button in the various modes in the fan modes being heat cool auto and various other things sleep swing direction led follow me timers turbo self clean i guess it's got a lot of functionality so we'll go ahead and just turn on the unit see what happens well it's working so the vent is opening up and it says 76 degrees up in the top right hand corner and it's blowing out cool air it's set on cool yeah this would work nice and there are there are fins in here that i believe you can adjust to angle the fins a certain way um because this will go up and down and flow the you know the air up and down but then you can angle it to a certain direction and we're going to angle it that way into the main area of our barnum so great it looks like it's working we'll be able to tell later on if it cools the place down when it's hot outside and heat we're not as concerned about heat i did place this up high in the second story because we're going to primarily use this for for cooling and i wanted to make sure it was cool upstairs in the bedrooms cool air sinks so having it up here uh will help hopefully cool the upstairs and with the fans going everything circulate that cool air um the heat though i'm not sure about the heat being up this high because hot air rises and so this might make this the upstairs hot and the downstairs cool so i'm not so sure how that's going to work up here but like i said i'm not as concerned because we have the wood burning stove we're going to install and that's going to be our primary source of heat this will just be back up you know keep it above freezing i guess just in case once we get through all the seasons a full year of using this thing i'll post a follow-up video to this one on how this thing performed in the winter with the heat and also in the summer with the air conditioning so make sure to check that video out when you get a chance all right so i did show you how it came with the remote control which is handy but it's also a smart unit so like i said in the beginning this thing can connect to an app on your phone and also to amazon alexa and the google assistant so this came with this handy little box here with some instructions inside and it just has a little instruction booklet and it really just describes how to plug this in it's just a usb device um it does say to turn off the unit first before plugging it in so i'll turn that off let that power down and then you just lift the lid which is where you also access the two different filters these just pop out like so and you can clean them and you need to clean them and then up in the lid here there is a device to plug this into so right here the device will plug in right into that slot there okay guess that's it just close the lid all right now that we got the smart device plugged in i can turn the unit back on and use my phone to download the app configure everything so it connects to this smart device and i'll be able to control my heating and air with my phone and with my alexa well there you have it the installation of the mr cool diy 24k mini split unit you can pick this thing up off amazon for less than two thousand dollars so i think it's a great deal to heat and cool a small space like this eleven hundred square feet it's perfect so hopefully you like this video hopefully you got something out of it learn something if so make sure you hit that subscribe button and that like button so you can stay up to date on everything that we're doing out here at the ranch so until next time keep living the dream [Music] you

Channel: From Scratch Ranch

Views: 15,634

Rating: 4.7446809 out of 5

Keywords: Homestead, Homesteading, Ranch, Horse, From Scratch, Land, Chickens, Goats, Horse Fencing, Gardening, Barn, Arkansas, Ozarks, Horse Jumping, Self reliance, barndominiums, barndominium, Living the Dream, modern homesteading, mini split install, mr cool diy, mrcool diy, Mr Cool DIY 4k, Heat Pump, mrcool diy 24k btu mini-split air conditioner and heat pump with wi-fi smart controller, mrcool diy mini split installation

Id: ol5WgeGQRVA

Length: 43min 53sec (2633 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020