I am sorry but not enogh info from you to even begin to help.

Market conditions and individual contractor experiences and practices are specific to where you are and who is involved. The way to calibrate the bid you got is to get a few more from other contractors.

greatly appreciate all that info. and glad to see someone with my brand have such a good experience. can you easily get a pic of the joists that were cut and how they supported them. i'm confident in what he's proposing but always nice to see one in action. if not no biggie. Theres no way he's doing anything other than good work based on my 5 hour appt with him. because of my 2x10 joists he said maybe 8 inches will show above my attic floor and a 3 ft x 1 ft box overall.

Where are your outdoor units located. I'm currently in the discussions to move one from under a window to somewhere else but it will require much longer runs. but also getting away from full southern facing seems like something worth doing.

I understand some balancing will take place deciding what temps but once things settled down did you use any timers? sounds like your bedroom could call for one.

did you use this for heating at all? i have pretty cheap gas bills (110 a month vs almost 3000 a year for my old oil) so i['m pretty happy with my current heating cost but very curious someone who uses these to heat.

Any experience with 3rd party things like Cielo controllers (wifi)? i wanted to get one at least for the MBR and the LR. i can def see me turning it warmer during the day in the MBR but wanting it cooler at nite. My plan is have 2 remotes. one that will be used for MBR and spare bedroom and 2nd remote for the kitchen and DR.

he told me they arent allowed to install in bathrooms and i get it. probably would be a waste anyway and oversized. any issues with keeping the bathroom cool?

any regrets getting cassettes vs wall units? im fortunate i have the abilty to get 3 of them and only 1 wall unit. just think it will look better. hope cassettes do just as good as wall units.

THANK You for your detailed post and any other words of wisdom you can supply.

Hi Lucky,

Can't get a picture since they are in the attic. However they sistered the joists and used metal hangers to support everything. The structural engineer said all was good with the sisters and the metal hangers but they hadn't put nails in the metal hangers so he put them in for us.

The ceiling units also are supported by cables that go into the roof beams. He wrote a letter that the beams could support the weight of the cassettes for us which we gave to the city inspectors.

We have one outdoor unit on the east side. It is near our bedroom window. The outdoor units are pretty quiet and we don't hear it at all from the inside. It gets full morning sun. The other is on the west side under an office window.

There is no issue with them getting full sun. In fact they work better the hotter it is. Every spring when we turn them on and it it still cool out the temp coming out is in the 50s and I get concerned that coolant leaked out or something. But measure the temp coming out when they are hit with the sun and it is as low as 42F but most often 48 or 49F. I wouldn't bother relocating them to keep them out of the sun. They do great with more heat on them. You do want to have it somewhere you can hose the coils off. We get cotton wood tree debris that needs to be washed off a couple of times a year.

We don't use any timers. I just adjust them as needed. There was a bit of a learning curve to decide how we liked to use them. In the spring and the fall we turn them all off at night so that likely saves alot of energy. When it is in the 80s at night we leave them all on over night but set the temp. higher to 76F. Usually wake up with the house at 74 so I guess they are all over shooting at night.

Our master bedroom has a ceiling cassette and it often overshoots the cooling. There is a programmable adjustment that you can do (in the ceiling cassette remote thermostat and controller) to solve that but I like keeping the bedroom cooler so we've never programmed it. We have the thermostat on the hall going into the bedroom so that may have something to do with it. Also our master bedroom is on the NE corner of the house so doesn't get alot of sun load during the day.

The master bath has a much higher heat load. It is a large room with two south facing skylights and a wall of south facing windows. It has a wall unit and does quite well keeping the room cool.

Our other two bathrooms are off the main living area which has a ceiling cassette over a catwalk to the second floor bedrooms. These two bathrooms don't have a separate unit. We just keep the doors open off the main area to cool them.

We have only used them to heat when we were having our boiler replaced (we have hydronic infloor radiant heat) and once when we were replacing a zone valve on the floor heat system. They work fantastic as a back up heat source.

For both cassettes and wall units you want to have them accessible via a step ladder to clean the filters. They are easy to clean, just rinse them off and dry them but it is a hassle if you have to bring in an extension ladder. We have one wall unit which is almost too high to reach with the step ladder. My husband can just barely do it. We should have put that wall unit about 6 inches lower.

In terms of cassettes vs wall units it all depends on where you want the air to go. Our 4 way cassette over the upstairs catwalk is fantastic for throwing air in all 4 directions. However the wall unit in the family room is angled to also throw air into the kitchen. They both work great for their intended purposes. In our master bedroom we are running the cassette in a 3 vent mode to not have cold air pouring down on the bed. This is done with a foam insert from Fujitsu and programming it to be in 3 vent mode.

We left room next to the west facing outdoor unit to put another one if we ever needed to put more units in. On the west side of the house we have a guest bedroom on the upper floor and an office under it on the lower floor. Currently we just leave the doors open and that keeps them cool. For us those rooms are used sporadically during the day. If someone ever bought the house and used them as bedrooms then they probably would want to put in wall units to keep them cool with the doors closed. We didn't do it because we didn't need to.

I don't think you will regret getting them. Walking around to adjust them as needed was a habit change for us but once we got used to it we didn't notice it anymore. The benefit of being able to set each area's temp. independently far out weights the hassle. My husband doesn't like the cold air blowing on him when he is watching TV in the family room in the evening so will set it higher. I have an exercise bike in the living room that I ride in the evening so I keep that one lower until after I ride. Then I too will get cold sitting in the cold breeze so will set mine higher. At night I like to be piled under blankets so love the cold bedroom and the dog is part chow so is very furry. He also likes a cold bedroom.

If you have a gas furnace is it possible to just add a heat pump to your existing system?

Joists sound like the way my guy is doing them. he actually did mention the nails and hangars so thats great!

I dont understand the comment about them doing better in direct sun . do you mean during their use as a heating function? id assume in summers some shade would be prudent. i dont see using them for the heating function except when i have a guest in the spare room. rest of the house is perfect now temp wise in the winter. plus i love the hot water baseboards because of the even long lasting heat. cant see changing from using them to the splits. maybe ill experiment one month to see.

My contractor said the cassettes have less chance of blower motor getting dirty vs wall units. is this your experience? also have you had any units professionally done with the 'bib' method . ive seen vids of this for wall units. not fun!

good to know about the foam insert. i def want that in the bedroom to keep away the current and also in the DR to direct more air to my LR. both those rooms will be cooled by a single cassette.

Sounds like you have wired thermostats. i know he can fish thru my plaster walls if i really wanted him to but i'm going to rely on the remote internet devices for the thermostat, (theres also an option to use the cassette itself for a thermostat.) that way the remote in the LR will cause the cassette in the DR to cool down to what it needs to in the LR. i know this will overshoot in the DR but he said shouldnt be more than a degree.

im glad to hear though that you have zero issues due to sun beating on the unit. i still do hope he can move it since i dont really want it next to my back door.

i have a boiler not a furnace so sadly cannot just add AC that way

Pics are worth a 1000 words.

West side outdoor unit. They were going to center it but we wanted to leave room for another outdoor unit if needed. The white cover that looks like a gutter is covering the line set that goes up to the 2nd floor attic. The condensation line runs into the gutter that is right next to it. This is under our office window

East side outdoor unit. This is near our bedroom window. We don't hear it at all. The white that looks like a gutter is covering the line set that goes into the attic. The condensation empties into the concrete gutter drain. There was no gutter nearby to empty it into so it goes through a pvc pipe and into this concrete drain to move it away from the house. They did not install this. They had the drain just going into the rocks through the PVC pipe so we put the concrete pan in ourselves to move it further from the house.

Wall unit that is a little too high on the wall. 6" lower would be alot easier to clean the filter. We couldn't bring it alot lower because it is gravity drain to the condensation pipe you see above in the outdoor east side picture.

Wall unit in master bath. Much easier to access with step ladder to clean the filter. It is still quite high as the light sconce in the picture is above the doors going into the bathroom.

Ceiling cassette above our bed. We closed off the blower closest to the wall as that is right over the head of our bed. The angles in the bedroom prevented our being able to use a wall unit. I should have taken the picture from a little farther back to show this.

Ceiling unit above catwalk on the second floor. Blows in all 4 directions and cools the main living area.

Same ceiling unit, taken from other side of catwalk.

I didn't take one of the other wall unit since it is just a regular rectangle bedroom and hangs on the wall.

It is counter intuitive about the sun. In fact my husband was just arguing about it. We are both electrical engineers so not technology neophytes. But when I measure the output with temp. sensor gun I am getting middling 54-56F temp. when the outdoor units are in 60sF and in the shade. Have the sun come up and hit them and all of a sudden I'm getting 48-49F. Hot days are the best! They really spew out the freezing cold air. Why? I don't know. We would have to ask Fujitsu. My husband says theoretically what I'm saying makes no sense. And I agree. But he doesn't run around with the temp gun measuring the temps to see how they are performing.

We also have a boiler so no duct work and no way to add duct work. Been very happy with the mini-splits.

We stick with our radiant heated floors for heat. But having a back-up is great peace of mind. When we had our boiler replaced in Dec. they offered us space heaters. We said, thanks but don't need them. We'll just use the mini-split heat and it worked great.

Interesting that he said the cassettes get less dirty. We have never cleaned any of our units with the bib method. But we try to not get them dirty. We run air cleaners in the house during wildfire season and turn the minisplits off when we burn something in the kitchen and open the windows. Eventually we may have to have them cleaned but so far they haven't had a noticeable performance hit. You do have to clean the indoor filters though. I noticed I wasn't feeling the breeze in the living room earlier this summer (on a 100F+ day) so we cleaned the filters and all of a sudden I could feel it again. It wasn't that dirty but I'm wondering if we forgot to do it at the end of last season or the beginning of this season.

If you put in a foam insert you have to change the programming to 3 way mode which probably slows down the motor. For your living room/dining room situation I would try it without at first. My guess it is the LR will be cooled just fine. We use one cassette (the one over the catwalk) for our living room, dining room, 2 bathrooms, office room, laundry room, large entryway and 3 story stairwell. It is the largest size and does a great job. This area has a wall of south windows and a wall with vaulted windows on a SW angled wall. Very high heat load.

We use one wall unit for our family room and kitchen. They both have full wall south facing windows, with the kitchen having floor to ceiling windows and 3 south facing skylights. The heat load in there is very high so we have an external solar screen over the floor to ceiling kitchen windows. We were concerned the kitchen wouldn't get enough cooling but we angled the wall unit vanes toward it and it has been just fine.

We have wired thermostats on both cassettes and a remote control for each of the wall units. The wired ones can be set to use the thermostat as the temp. to control the ceiling cassettes.

Wiring them was pretty easy because we had the wall thermostats put next to the thermostats for the infloor radiant heat. Also the folks who built our house put conduit from both the east and the west side attics to the basement so it was easy for him to drop the wire down the conduit into the basement and then come back up the holes the radiant floor thermostats use for their wiring, into the walls.

Thanks for posting the pictures. I see they are pretty far away from the house which is what I think I would like him to do. Also I was pretty sure there's a shut off at each one but your picture approved that there is.

 The wall unit looks very high but maybe it's just the angle of the picture I would definitely not want it that high. No way for maintenance. The one thing that I'm certain of is the cassette's definitely look better and they're worth the extra aggravation. It is a long-term permanent addition to the house. It can only increase the value. Regarding the temperatures my girlfriend is a mechanical engineer so maybe she can get into the fray. But I also like to go around with the thermometer and measure things like baseboard temperatures which is how I found one of my baseboards is likely clogged because the temperature is 30° lower than every other baseboard.

Interesting what you said about running air filters. I currently have a whole house dehumidifier. One of the good ones that cost over $1,000 and it definitely dehumidifies the entire house. Even the rooms that are far away are 50 or 55% on the hottest days. But of course if I turn the compressor off I can use it as a whole house air cleaner and it is definitely easier to change that single filter then all the other ones. The manual I believe says once a month but I think there's a light on there if I do recall the instructions.

Regarding dropping lines for thermostats and things like that you are lucky your house was built so well. One time I was in my attic using a 10-ft pole to try to go down a wall to fish a cable and I kept running into the lathe and plaster stuff. So I just gave up. My guy just contact me and said he will come tomorrow to reevaluate the entire installation so I will see what he thinks. He may tell me that the unit has to stay under my window on the southern face but at least now I know it's not the end of the world

The family room wall unit is very high. My husband is 6 ft with long arms and if he gets on the next to the top step of a 6 ft step ladder and stretches he can just barely pop the cover up and pull the filter. It is too high to be safely accessed from that step ladder. If he could stay one step down from that it would be much safer. We should probably invest in an 8 or 9 ft step ladder so that is an option if you have to install one too high to reach with a 6 ft step ladder.

In terms of the look of the wall unit I was initially concerned but after installation they kind of disappear. They are too high on the wall to be in the line of sight so we don't notice them. We've got smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, ceiling fans, whole house speakers and light fixtures up there. The mini-split air conditioners just become part of the house.

Another productive meeting today it was 2 hours. He is very thorough and I think he kind of likes me keeping him on his toes. The first thing was the outside unit and the Southern exposure he said there's no reason to worry about that because of the coil being deep inside and he said they never have worried about positioning anything towards the sun.

When he looked at my dining room again he then looked at my living room and once he was in the Attic he realized it would probably be easier to put the cassette in the living room because the living room has unfinished floor over it whereas the dining room has a finished floor and would have been more awkward with a big box in the middle of the floor. Also I said 99% of the time we are in the living room not the dining room so now we will definitely have a very cool living room that will spill over into the dining room. Also we had to work some magic with the drainage from living room but I will not bore you with those details and how it's going to drain through my breezeway.

Since I found an access panel in my upstairs bedroom he crawled into the attic and confirmed after taking many measurements both inside and out that the cassette will indeed fit exactly where I won in the bedroom and he will block off the directions so it does not face the bed so I am happy there.

I told him I want two remotes and then told him about the internet device that I will be used to control them and I was kind of surprised he really hadn't heard about them before. I said that's what I'm going to use to control my units through my phone or through the panel itself. Of course maybe they're not supposed to discuss third party things because they're supposed to sell the company's internet package which I think is about $400 per unit. And he admitted it is not even in stock at this time he doesn't think.

Here's something bizarre. My girlfriend has her cats locked in another room because we are integrating her cats with my cat and it admittedly smells a bit in there now and the guy says you better remedy that problem because the ammonia and cat pee can dissolve the copper that is in the air conditioning unit. What do you think of that. I did a quick Google and it definitely said the dogs should not pee on the outside units because it will damage them but I cannot believe that the vapor of ammonia will harm an air conditioner. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing.

I just got the quote in email and he didn't break it out line by line. But rather by which side of the house. The side of the house with the living room having a 12,000 unit and the kitchen having a 9,000 unit and the outdoor unit is 18 and that entire package is $10,550 and I'm not sure if it matters that 21 is greater than 18,000 but I'm going to ask him. The other side of the house is two bedrooms with 9,000 cassette and 9000 wall unit and 18,000 outdoor unit and that total is $9850. I knew the work on the joists would add up to a lot extra. And my lines will probably be pretty long but the look will be well worth the extra expense of the cheaper wall units. 12 years full part warranty first year cleaning and one additional remote control is included

How soon can you get it installed? I'm curious on the lead time with all the supply chain issues.

The sum of the indoor units being larger than the outdoor unit capacity is OK. They are variable speed and balance themselves out while running. Both sides of our house are over capacity like that but the Fujitsu manuals say that is ok and give guidelines as to how much over capacity they can be. Your guy sounds really knowledgeable so I wouldn't worry about it.

He sounds pretty competent and that is worth alot. Our first installer had to pull all his equipment and patch all his holes in the wall. We then had to find another installer to do the install. Both were listed as trained experts on the Fujitsu web site.

It was a little more but we feel we dodged a bullet with the first installer. One of the things he did wrong was not brace the cut joists properly so we had some cracking drywall. After the city inspector got after him he braced them properly (sistered them and put in the hangers) and hired a drywall guy to fix, texture and paint the damage but he had an on the job accident and we mutually felt it was best to part ways.

The second place the owner was super competent but his crew not so much. After the install I showed up with a bunch of pictures and list of items. He then came himself with a crew of 9 or 12 guys who swarmed the place and checked every connection and bolt. The owner himself was in our attic redoing the wiring. Even so we had one of the drain lines that wasn't angled properly in the attic hold water over the winter, freeze and split. In the spring we had them back out to fix it and then we had to repair, paint and texture the drywall.

If the guy giving the quote is actually going to do the install you may be very lucky indeed.

I looked ours up. We have a 24K outdoor unit with an 18K ceiling cassette and a 9K wall unit. So 27K indoor to the 24K outdoor.

We also have a 36K outdoor unit with a 12K ceiling cassette, a 18K wall unit and a 9K wall unit. So 39K indoor to the 36K outdoor.

At the time I had the same question as you and looked up the specs on the Fujitsu website. Due to the variable speed nature of everything this was within specs.

I was wrong about the date. We had this installed in Dec. 2011 so it is older than I thought. We paid about $16K but the joist cutting and bracing was already done by the first contractor who refunded our money when he pulled his equipment out. Probably would have been a couple thousand more to have the second contractor do the framing for the ceiling cassettes. As it was he just had to drop them into the hole made by the other contractor and I know he took that into account when he gave us his quote. We did hire a civil engineer for $350 to make sure the joist cutting and bracing was done properly.

What remotes are you getting? We have these two types

These wall mount wired ones for each of the ceiling cassettes.

3 of these wireless ones for the wall units.

Unsure what remotes will be getting. he did confirm the wall unit operates the cassettes so it will be whatever the wall unit comes with. Good to know all the specs and yours are a bit over too. Turns out he did write from home back to me and said the company specs say he can do what he did but for 350 i could upgrade but i said no. keep the 18K

all indications are aug 29 week. hope thats true. sounds like you had kind of a nightmare with your install and issues. i hope this crew is better!

1st year of maintenance will be included so ill be watching for sure but hope my filters dont need much cleaning during the year.

Don't be afraid of cleaning the filters. It is simple. We dry ours with a bath towel before putting them back. The manual says air dry them but we are impatient.

Hosing off the outdoor coils is easy also. They will probably show you but you want to use a gentle water flow so as not to bend them. Ours have dents from hail over the years but they still work just fine.

The only thing that mystifies us is the extra filters in the wall units. Some of ours didn't come with them and we are not really sure if they do much so we rinse them out, dry them in a towel and keep using them. They are expensive to buy and the manual gave no info on ordering them so we haven't really taken them seriously.

So far we've never had any of the indoor drainage pumps clog or any funny smells. But we run internal Winix brand air cleaners and aren't smokers.

I'm very curious as to what they do for your yearly maintenance.

my manual has

APPLE-CATECHIN FILTER: UTR-FA16 ION DEODORIZATION FILTER (light blue): UTR-FA16-2

and when i questioned him on the small ion one he pretty much agreed, not needed to be maintained/refreshed. just the main filter

question about the cassettes. can you easily change from blocking one side of the vent to another.

Yes. We originally had the contractor block one side but then we moved our bed to the other side of the room so took off that foam piece and installed one for the other side. We did it ourselves as it was just removing the faceplate screws. The foam blocking kit comes with different shaped pieces of foam for the different outlets since they aren't all the same shape. Just hold on to the kit pieces he doesn't use.

excellent. based on LR position it may or may not blow towards my sofa so i want to be able to block that if i need to. ditto the bed. im fortunate that the cassette will actually be 45 degrees to the bed and no direct 90 degree angles. but you never know the flow till it starts

When you see these filters and how they are placed you will be like "What??? These are doing anything?"

https://hvacdirect.com/fujitsu-replacement-air-filters-k9317250009.html

Instead we run winix air cleaners with hepa filters, charcoal filters, and prescreen filters. For a fraction of the price I can get a hepa air filter and 4 charcoal filters.

https://www.amazon.com/Carbon-Replacement-WAC5300-WAC5500-WAC6300/dp/B072M6DSXB/ref=asc_df_B072M6DSXB/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=295661663174&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4771131046024211451&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028797&hvtargid=pla-663714046048&psc=1

Also the winix machines have sensors which up the speed if they smell odor or sense dust.

The screen filters in the Fujitsu machines are fantastic and easy to wash off and clean. I almost think Fujitsu was just trying to come up with an on-going revenue stream because the ductless mini-splits are pretty much once and done. No ongoing maintenance cost so they invented those silly little filters and put a huge price on them.

Edit: I thought about what I said above which sounds a bit disparaging of Fujitsu. So I have to also give them kudos for designing really well engineered units. My hat is off to them for providing such a great product. It has withstood power surges, power failures and over 10 years of use with no malfunctions. The only problems we have had were due to installation errors. Nothing to do with the Fujitsu product. There hasn't been one day where I regret buying them. In fact it is hard to imagine how we lived with out them.

speaking power surges. his quote says whole house surge protection. i know they put a box on the outside of the house but would they do a surge protector for my entire house? i actually have a split box. its weird. but if he does it id be happy

https://www.santa-fe-products.com/product/compact-70-dehumidifier/

this thing has been operating since 2008 with zero issues. even without central air im never really above 60 percent even on the hottest days it does great, pulling from the entire house and yes i have sensors in the far away rooms. i probably will keep it running as my whole house air filter . i'm glad to hear you have no equipment issues. i just ordered the cielo breeze plus because it was 10 % off today so i really hope this gets installed in 2 weeks.

Can't answer what they are doing for your surge protection. We had whole house surge protection when they put ours in. But they have the grey boxes in the pics that they install next to the ACs which I think are supposed to protect the ACs also from surge or maybe just smooth out the power supply. I would have to look them up to be sure.

What area are you in? I'm curious because you have hot water heat and no AC. To me that says northern. Our house was originally built with just a large evaporative cooler and that may have worked well at that time but I think as the temps get hotter more people without AC are going to want AC.

Sounds like you have signed the contract. You must be relieved. I remember the research phase. When I was shopping for AC I looked at all option, including adding ducts (wasn't possible), high velocity air tubes and ductless mini-splits. I chose the ductless mini-split because it was a well known technology, used all over the world. I think I had read it was used in the White House.

I also liked the fact that there were no ducts or tubes to get dirty so the air would be cleaner. We got bids of $30K, $23K and $14K. I got the feeling that the really high ones were from companies who wanted a simple install where the units were hung on an outside wall and all they had to do was drill a hole in the wall. All our units are on internal walls or ceiling cassettes. So all the line sets and drainage goes through our attics which are unfinished and not meant to be walked around in. I don't think everyone wanted to work in that space.

I'm going to look up that thermostat you are using. When you get some experience with it post about how you are using it.

I don't normally check this heating and AC forum. We burned some eggrolls in our microwave/air fryer by not selecting air fry and over microwaving them. The smoke got in the ductless mini splits so I was considering if I needed to clean the coils. So far the microwave still stinks but the ductless are cooling fine and don't smell like smoke anymore so we will have to see. I was checking the forum just because I was thinking about cleaning the coils and saw your question. Would have loved to talk to someone with ductless mini-splits when we bought so thought I would chime in. :-)

im glad your stuff burnt then if it led you here! i hope no smoke did damage your units. i didnt actually sign yet. He hasnt contacted me about payment and confirming the date. just hope it's because he's super busy on another install. Im in PA and love my hot water baseboards. at work, other peoples homes it's so dry in winter. also as a child i literally was above the hot air furnace at home so it was either 80 or not so hot. Love the even baseboard heat today. The only positive about hot air is the superior recovery time. you can lower to 60 and it will have you up to 70 in no time in winter. try that with baseboard and you will wait days for recovery.

At least they had sense to do thru the wall units and one actually still functions on FULL all the time. No working thermostat. My AC guy was very interested in it when he got here. Kind of amazing it still works from the 50s or 60s. Thats how i knew had an AC geek and he is the one i should hire. I did the same with my boiler guy when i got that boiler. i literally was invited to his house to learn about things and knew how much he was into it. so if an owner invites you home, you know he's dependable with his work.

your attic does sound challenging. they are lucky half mine is floored, it will help a lot. He has one trick wiring issue where he will have to use a 20 ft poll, or more to fish the wire in back of my 2nd floor closet, where the unfinished attic is. Then one lineset will run from unfinished attic, under flooring , then back to unfinished flooring. so i have a lot of what i call 'custom' work. def not just hanging stuff on the walls.

also i expect after labor day it will be 70 or under every day and ill never get to use the AC but i can only hope for a few more heat waves! i'm undecided to use it for a test month to see if it's cheaper to heat the house with it on shoulder seasons.

For ours we paid at the end, after it was all installed, but you have to sign the contract to get the ball rolling. Did he send you a quote to sign or anything that could get the ball rolling?

Your lucky to have good contractors. My family is in Ohio and they have great contractors there to. When my brother had his boiler replaced it was the grandson of the guy who installed the original boiler. He always seems to get good work done because there are real professionals available.

We started our install in late summer also but ended up getting it installed in Dec. so had to wait till spring to use it.

Since I don't visit this forum if you have info on the smart thermostat your using post it on the thread so I get notified by the system.

yes have the quote but had question about payment. im sure he's installing someone elses and is busy. told me many times the install week is mine :) plus i'll be home micro supervising and learning about things

He called I made the deposit and we're definitely on for the week of the 29th.. he was not aware of the new law that passed and I said next year he may be pretty busy because homeowners with lower incomes can get heat pumps installed very reasonably priced

Congratulations! It is alot of work getting to this point. I can tell you did your research.

18,000 btu mini's installed for 2k. Heat and cool.

Had to call my bee guy in for emergency. They dug up nest in the ground

2 rooms down

Day 2

Forgot to upload the final product. I had only asked him for two remotes thinking they would be enough but now I realize one for each room really is ideal. Also I bought Cielo breeze and I'm going to try that for scheduling because something like the bedroom does not need to be as cold as during day as night. It took three guys all day Tuesday to do the kitchen and the living room. The living room had a special drain situation and just building up the frames for the cassettes takes time. Wall units would have been very easy. As far as the outdoor units he said do not worry about stuff like grass or rocks being thrown by the lawn mower so I'm not going to put up protective fences. Also he installed a whole house protector in the electric box so thats a big plus too.

More fun

I agree, one controller per indoor unit is ideal. That way you can check what temp. you have each room set for.

speaking of temp. it really is annoying that someone cant engineer a thermostat in the remote controller. id pay 50 bucks extra for it. but i guess if you have a controller only for a room you know what its set on. but now you go into a room and you just have to either have your own thermometer in there or just play up and down to whatever temp you want and make sure it's set on that. i do have thermometers in most rooms but still better if was in the remote. i set up a schedule with the cielo and will see if it controls the LR to get cool starting in the morning and turn up 4 degrees over night. i wrote to my guy asking what he can do for me controller wise. hopefully some appear soon

We have the two wall controllers for the cassettes. Right next to them we have our thermostats for our in-floor radiant heating. So we set the temp on the wall controller, elect for it to be sensed at the remote, but read the actual temp of the area on the radiant heat thermostats. For the wall units we set the temp on the hand remote. But we also have atomic clocks and weather stations in all the areas where we read the actual room temp.

so i was under the impression that adding AC means you dont need a dehumidifier. i was wrong. i unplugged my whole house dehumidifier since i got the minis installed and the RH has shot up with one time over 70 even. mostly is now mid to lower 60s. with the dehumidifier on i was in the 50s. could be lower if i turned the knob but i was ok with 50s. and yes even in the bathroom after a shower.

is this normal behavior. im sitting in the LR with 71 degrees and 67 RH. thats nuts. I do realize the splits have a DRY function but i really thought having AC meant drier air on its own. i dont wanna have to babysit a remote for each room to get the RH down. i guess will just plug in the big santa fe unit again. sigh

edit to add: i cannot run in auto mode because i found out the other day it turns on the heat. i was too cold in the room and cranked it 4 degrees higher than in the room and then realized it was heating!

Auto mode is not something we use on purpose. If you replace the batteries in the remotes for the wall unit they default to auto mode. In a room we don't use much my husband replaced the batteries and then set the temp up to the 80s since he just wanted to keep the room from getting too hot and it turned the heat on. He didn't even know it was in auto mode.

On the wall controllers for the cassettes I hate that I can barely tell the difference between the sun and ice icons. Be far better if they used a flame and snow flake.

Can't speak to the dehumidifying. We have very dry weather here and in the winter when we are using our in floor radiant heat we have to run a humidifier to be comfortable otherwise too many bloody noses from the dry air.

fyi Prime today has the breeze plus 20 percent off which is a legit deal