[HN Gopher] Installing a mini-split AC in a Brooklyn apartment
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Installing a mini-split AC in a Brooklyn apartment
Author : ibobev
Score : 42 points
Date : 2025-08-06 10:06 UTC (3 days ago)
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| steveBK123 wrote:
| Getting work done in your apartment in NYC always feels like
| being extorted.
| righthand wrote:
| Yeah I agree. I accidentally walked out my front door without
| my keys in my pocket for the first time in my life. I called my
| property management company who sent over a technician to
| unlock the door. The management company intentionally does such
| a poor job that there is no spare key to my apartment. So the
| technician has to drill the lock. Surprise! The technician only
| claims they have a lock-drilling skill.
|
| My phone dies and the technician says I have to call a
| locksmith and pay for it myself. Now I'm in small claims court
| for $1275 no good reason other than my property management
| company enabling extortion by a locksmith. All they had to do
| was hire or train someone into being competent lock driller.
|
| Real estate industry in this city is a toxic grift game. People
| are very nice here, but these real estate people are the
| "assholes" in which everyone refers. The whole thing is rotten
| except for maybe 5% of landlords.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| FWIW I would consider nobody other than me having access to a
| key to my apartment a feature!
|
| That's nuts though. Imagine a locksmith not being able to
| pick a lock. Like... you have one job?!
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Some locks are much harder to pick.
| righthand wrote:
| Especially if you don't bring basic tools and bore the
| whole thing out with a drill and then give up when it
| doesn't magically open.
| righthand wrote:
| Because he's not a locksmith, he is a contracted technician
| that performs duties in the illegal absence of a building
| super. There are more details to my case that will just
| make your jaw drop more but I chose to keep focused on the
| fundamentals. And yes if I owned the apartment I would not
| want property management having a key. However I include
| that detail to indicate how poorly managed my building is
| without listing off 10 other things.
| bigbadcity wrote:
| Drilling the lock is literally what emergency locksmiths do.
| This isn't a Mission Impossible movie. Bet you don't forget
| your key now.
| sejje wrote:
| Without attempting a pick?
|
| Only the grifters.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I have yet to see the first emergency locksmith that
| isn't a grifter. The moment you can't open a lock
| yourself, you're paying ten times the reasonable rate, or
| worse.
|
| It's usually cheaper to knock in a window, or if you live
| in an expensive area, to buy a fire axe and break down
| the door.
| silverlake wrote:
| Also, most of them are shockingly incompetent. It took years to
| assemble a list of quality service providers. I pay a little
| more but stuff works now.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| For anyone wondering, PTAC is an acronym for one of those
| through-the-wall hotel room AC units.
| lsaferite wrote:
| More specifically, Pass-Through Air Conditioner.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packaged_terminal_air_conditio.
| ..
| grasbergerm wrote:
| Packaged terminal air conditioner actually, https://en.m.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Packaged_terminal_air_condit...
| jacknews wrote:
| "but it also meant that our ground-floor neighbors don't have a
| window blocked that's under the stairs."
|
| That's a thing you could have done, cover their window with your
| AC unit? It seems like something that planning regulations should
| prevent. And still, they have a loud compressor right next to
| their window.
| Apreche wrote:
| I wish I could do this, but it's not an option when you rent.
| PTACs have been nothing but trouble.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| HVAC must be one of the most dishonest professions in the US. I'm
| not in NYC but received similar quotes($15-20k to do a few
| rooms).
|
| Obviously having family in South America where there are millions
| of these installed by unskilled labor I decided to DIY. So I
| installed 2 units with 2 heads each, including pouring the
| concrete pads, vacuuming the line sets, and charging them. Took
| me two weekends and about $4000 in materials including the units
| themselves. It's been two years, none of the BS fear mongering
| issues have happened, and they have almost paid for themselves.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| The part that always makes me chicken out is the electrical,
| did you have any issues with that part?
| rootsudo wrote:
| It's really easy, 220v is not that hard to install and is the
| scam scam run by people installing ev chargers.
|
| You do have to go through the permitting process which means
| having someone come out to view it and write off on it and if
| you state it properly it should be less than $200.
| sowbug wrote:
| The electrical is relatively easy. It's not much harder than
| replacing a frayed power cord on a lamp (with an extra wire
| if the unit is 220 rather than 110).
|
| Managing the lineset is the scary part (though it's not that
| hard). You're vacuuming copper lines that you've hopefully
| sealed correctly. If you get that wrong and your refrigerant
| yeets off into the sky, you have to call in help because it's
| hard for an unlicensed person to get the refrigerant legally.
| That half-hour of work and ~$1 of materials will cost you a
| punitive amount of money.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| It should be super-easy these days to get the license.
|
| Ten years ago, I downloaded a free study guide and took the
| test in-person at an A/C supply shop for about $50.
|
| Today, you can take the test online.
| raincom wrote:
| Thanks to ripping off by HVAC contractors, many are signing
| up for EPA 608 certification to get the refrigerant
| legally.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Electrical is both surprisingly easy and surprisingly hard.
|
| The actual work involved is relatively easy and
| straightforward. However, the code and regulations are
| extremely difficult to navigate. There's a lot of non-obvious
| things you have to do to be code-compliant.
| raincom wrote:
| Some understanding of electrical circuits, split phase
| motors, and control circuits (using step down transformers,
| relays, contactors) is extremely helpful. HVAC systems
| contains at least two motors--blower motor inside and
| compressor motor outside. And control circuits are activated
| by a thermostat.
| raincom wrote:
| Many HVAC technicians are not good at service calls
| (troubleshoot and fix); they are sales people in disguise. I
| also heard many local HVAC/plumbing companies are owned by
| private equity of sorts.
| threemux wrote:
| They even have DIY friendly ones now where you don't even need
| a vacuum pump (not that it's hard but it is one more thing). So
| easy
| pkaye wrote:
| Private equity has been buying out HVAC companies in the US.
| The technician are forced to drive up sales. So instead of
| repairing something, they now recommend new equipment. I saw
| this difference in behavior at an HVAC company I used for a 10
| years. The owners were retiring and the private equity bought
| them out. You really have to go by word of mouth and seek out
| the smaller companies.
|
| Similar thing happened for Veterinary care clinics.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/HVAC/comments/16asntf/lets_talk_abo...
| thechao wrote:
| RAM Air in San Marcos, south of Austin. Ask for Edgar. He's
| self trained and likes to rebuild boards from scratch. He'll
| service out to west Austin if the job is big enough. He
| mostly trains techs. So, if you ask, he'll happily walk you
| through a repair in the phone. (Most jobs are only 20-40m.)
| He makes his money on the big jobs with repeat customers.
| When he retires ... fuck me.
| porknubbins wrote:
| There is a very different pattern I learned to recognize with
| Private Equity electricians. Its not all negative- they have
| fast availability and good communication (because they have
| office staff), but that's the end of the good stuff.
|
| You call for one broken outlet and they pull out fancy
| branded folders and pens with checklists of every little
| thing that could possibly be upgraded (inplying its needed
| for safety) present you with a multi $K bill and then do a
| little magic 10% discount for some reason to make you think
| its a good deal.
|
| That said I get my petty revenge by asking questions at the
| free consult (marketing opportunity) then hiring local guys
| instead, whenever I cam find them.
| petters wrote:
| > Installation This was supposed to take a week and a half, two
| weeks max. It took more than a month.
|
| This sounds very strange to me. I installed ACs on all three
| floors in my house in a day. (Not in the US)
| sethhochberg wrote:
| If all of the trades were there on the same day and each could
| begin their work immediately after the prior specialist had
| finished it might have taken a day or a few, but it sounds like
| much of that month was simply waiting. If you're handy and in a
| part of the world where you can just do all of this work
| yourself at your own pace its no surprise you can be much
| faster.
|
| NYC is a famously difficult place to have work like this done,
| especially in a shared-ownership building like a condo. You
| need your neighbors to agree its okay to do, your
| board/management company needs to review and be satisfied with
| the insurance your contractors carry, the city has requirements
| for electrical that always require permits and often require a
| master electrician to do the work, and even once the work
| starts the walls and spaces you're working in aren't
| exclusively yours and your contractors will be discovering
| things along the way... plumbing for that spigot you didn't
| know your neighbor had on their terrace, roof drains, etc.
|
| The process of just getting approval to do work can vary from
| "chill but time consuming" in small buildings to "impenetrable
| bureaucracy so don't bother if you're not using the approved
| vendors" in large co-ops. Once it starts, that master
| electrician you hired to run the 220v service isn't gonna waste
| his time repairing drywall, a cheaper subcontractor will do
| that, and the latency just cranks up from there
|
| I love city living and understand that most of these rules and
| regulations exist because bad things happened when they didn't
| - frankly I wouldn't trust most of my neighbors in buildings
| I've lived in to do their own electrical work or pierce the
| building's envelope for any reason - but also sort of
| understand where the outsider's perception that city homeowner
| life is hard and expensive comes from. It very often is, by
| comparison.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There is a way around this, but it is board driven: a group
| buy is arranged and the entire building is done at once. The
| board or a GC they hire subs out the work and coordinates
| order of operations, and uses known good contractors from
| references. It's for sure a coordination challenge, but it
| can be done if the will is there and residents are friendly
| to collaboration. Otherwise, it's just pain (having
| coordinated electrification refits for ~50 unit buildings).
| porknubbins wrote:
| I just did an 18K BTU mini split in my garage myself with no
| HVAC background for around $1K and $300 in tools. For a little
| more capacity this guy paid 30-40x the price.
|
| This article is a perfect example of why I moved out of NYC.
| Contractors there are more likely to be dishonest, less skilled
| and more expensive and have insane leverage over rich apartment
| dwellers who might own a screwdriver but basically have no
| ability (or permission) to do anything themselves.
|
| Smart, productive people thus have large parts of their lives
| eaten up dealing with things that are trivial in a large
| majority of the country because of the density. I decided I'd
| rather spend my time pursuing my own goals not basic daily
| comfort.
| pjbk wrote:
| I had to read that line three times to convince myself there
| was not an extra zero in that 40k figure. It's insane.
| egorfine wrote:
| > I can install some wifi extension for $1000
|
| Take a look at Sensibo. I have one and I'm pretty happy about it.
| gbil wrote:
| On a similar note, I have some Daikin AC units, expensive ones
| and of course they didn't come with wifi module which Daikin
| prices at 100+ Euro per module. After some searching around I
| found the Faikin [1] project and got one module to test for
| around 30 Euro and it works brilliantly for 1/3 of the price
| and provides even more functionality from what I've read with
| seamless HA integration.
|
| [1] https://github.com/revk/ESP32-Faikin
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yeah the wifi addons are complete rip offs, they're like $20 in
| components tops - plenty of people diy their own
| kpozin wrote:
| If you just want to be able to control the ACs remotely,
| without remote sensing, you can buy some cheap IoT IR blasters
| (around $15-30 for Zigbee or WiFi versions). They'll often have
| control schemes you can download for your specific equipment
| (cloning the IR remote control that came with the AC).
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| The best thing we can do for the environment is to tear down old
| houses and build modern ones in their place.
|
| I say that even though I live in a historic house that I'd hate
| to see go away.
|
| That said, I've spent a fortune bringing it up to modern energy
| efficiency standards.
| JulianWasTaken wrote:
| Not directly relevant, but my PTAC in NYC started having issues
| this summer just as things got hot (of course).
|
| The compressor would come on for a few seconds then shut off.
|
| After 2 different HVAC companies quoted me $275 to come out (plus
| hourly and the repair once they find the issue) and then also
| told me it would be 10 days before they had availability I
| finally bit the bullet, bought a $30 multimeter, watched a few
| videos on how capacitor failure is super common and how to
| hopefully not kill myself, and after confirming with the
| multimeter and buying the $7 capacitor everything was right back
| to working with 2 minutes of work.
|
| I did have a moment where I dreaded thinking I'd need to replace
| the unit and if so whether I'd want a split put in but for $53K
| I'd better get a third job... Quite glad not to have had to get
| too far down this road.
| mbreese wrote:
| I had something similar happen, but for a gas boiler (hot water
| radiators). Our was older, but not super old. It would
| intermittently turn off and we couldn't figure it out. HVAC
| Contractor (who we had a maintenance contract with) thought the
| system was toast and needed a replacement. I noticed a bad
| capacitor (was blown). HVAC contractor claimed they couldn't
| find one through their suppliers. I had two delivered five days
| later.
|
| When they came back to check the system for a full quote, the
| tech felt so bad that they just installed the new capacitor for
| free and we got another few years out of that boiler.
| ipython wrote:
| They don't say what the kWh usage is, just that the electricity
| cost in $$ is over $1000 on the highest month. For a unit
| surrounded by what should be other conditioned spaces, that's
| insane to me.
|
| A quick web search indicates that nyc $/kwh is about 31c. So
| that's 3225kwh in one month! My standalone house plus pool pump,
| dual zone ac, and ev charger doesn't even come close. Clearly
| there is a major insulation issue which is the root cause and
| everything else is just trying to put bandaids on an arterial
| bleed.
| hbarka wrote:
| Old brownstone apartments probably had poor insulation. Add to
| it that Brooklyn electricity charges are much higher than the
| New York average.
| weaksauce wrote:
| they had a unit that uses resistive heating if it gets too cold
| instead of the heat pump which adds up in the cold ny winters
| I'd gather.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > How much money did we save? Not as much as expected. The most
| expensive month in the next winter was $1000.
|
| $1,000/month to heat a 3br apartment? Holy crap is he keeping it
| at sauna temperatures? The most I've ever spent on my poorly-
| insulated 1960's era bilevel house is about $250.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| If your bedrooms are upstairs, at night you might be running
| heat a lot less since some of the heat from the first floor
| rises up to the second. If you have carpet, that can create a
| warmer area at the floor, closer to where your beds are. So you
| might not need to heat things as much, or to as high a
| temperature to feel comfortable.
|
| I lived in an apartment where the floor was poorly insulated.
| When a new neighbor moved in downstairs that heated their
| bedroom more aggressively at night, my heating bill went down
| because the heat rising from below made it less necessary to
| run my own heating as hard.
|
| It might also be the difference in electricity cost. Especially
| with tiered rates, you can easily find yourself moving into a
| higher tier where every kW is significantly more expensive than
| in the previous tiers. PG&E in the SF Bay Area charges between
| 43 and 60c/kWh. A 2kW heater is going to cost about $1/hr to
| run , so if you're working from home, have little kids it gets
| expensive quick. And in the middle of a NY winter, with a
| poorly isolated apartment, you might well be running the heat
| in some capacity pretty much 24/7.
| extra88 wrote:
| Con Ed rates are about 0.16/kWh so in their case it's not the
| cost of electricity, it's all the things explained after the
| $1000/month line, a ridiculous lack of insulation and lack of
| air-tightness.
|
| They may also keep the heat higher than most people. There's
| mention of an au pair so there must be a small child.
| lsaferite wrote:
| I'm with you on this. That cost seems excessive. Mind you, they
| should including be quoting kwh usage as price varies by
| region. And they should be talking about the temperature
| differential they are maintaining.
| bigbadcity wrote:
| Spending 42k instead of adding some $2/free improvised shims to
| fix the AC angle to drip outside sure is a life decision.
| Especially when you learn where this is (I won't dox the author).
| BKUSA baby! We attract the smartest hippest people.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| The article did mention there are other benefits, noise,
| improved temperature hysteresis, the ability to actually
| provide sufficient heat during the cold months.
|
| Ever spend time in a hotel room with a noisy, rattly AC that
| turned on and off all the time because it couldn't maintain the
| temperatures at the set point? Hard to get decent sleep.
| RatchetWerks wrote:
| 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
| rjsw wrote:
| Your link to the Mitsubishi support site doesn't seem correct.
| RatchetWerks wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Did you try connecting to the server?
|
| A Google search on the hostname does return entries for
| Mitsubishi, DNS points to AWS.
| conductr wrote:
| 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).
| raincom wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bityard wrote:
| 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.
| stego-tech wrote:
| > 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.
| bboygravity wrote:
| How is a plain old AC suddenly considered "green tech" and
| renamed to "heat pump" in Europe?
| asteroidburger wrote:
| 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.
| yardie wrote:
| > Still when I ask Claude.AI to double-check the math on our
| power consumption, it thinks we have an incredibly leaky
| apartment. Like ridiculously off the charts. This also lines up
| with my inability to run a humidifier in the winter. I got the
| biggest, baddest humidifier I could find, and it barely makes a
| difference.
|
| I would have started figuring this out before spending any money
| on a mini-split. OP, your climate envelope has failed somewhere.
| Spend some more money on a IR camera and try and identify where
| that leak is. Your basically just air-conditioning some of your
| apartment and some of the outdoors.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Their electricity company might do the inspection as free. Ours
| does. They even offer grants to deal with some of the issues.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| the HVAC industry in the US is absolute highway robbery, I was
| quoted $10k to install a $1k mini split that took a total novice
| (me) a weekend to install - the most difficult part of the
| process was figuring out the best place to route the copper lines
| (because you have to be careful not to pinch them around a
| corner)
|
| a friend paid a similar company the same and the work looks like
| total garbage, they're didn't even properly set the pad to place
| the outdoor unit on - and the techs are absolutely clueless about
| how the systems work
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| It costs next to nothing if you do it like the K-man
|
| https://youtu.be/62NyFTAKgOI?si=SQR-FDoq3CF4UvIy
| leeroihe wrote:
| Why on earth would you spend this kind of money on an apt you
| don't even own?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| > We bought this apartment at the end of 2023
|
| First sentence of the Prologue.
| medler wrote:
| I had this done recently, also in a Brooklyn apartment, and this
| article made me appreciate that my contractor was insanely good.
| The main reason I didn't DIY it was because I thought it would be
| hard to get the condo board to agree to it, but after watching
| them do the work I realized there was no way I could have done it
| myself. Not really because of the HVAC part, but because of the
| cutting through exterior walls and snaking the line through the
| walls. It took about 2 days, the quality of the work was very
| good, and they even worked around my kid's nap schedule. They
| have also been very prompt when I've needed service calls since
| then. Overall it was a huge amount of money well spent.
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