how's it going guys welcome back to the patriot diy channel today is a day i've been waiting
for for a very long time we're going to be making a very much needed upgrade to the shop
now i know a lot of you guys can feel my pain because it is hot especially those of you
that are like me you're in the southeastern part of the country it has been in the 90s
every single day for the past month and it makes it really difficult to get out in the shop and
work on projects but today we fix it and we're going to fix it with a mr cool diy mini split
right guys yes we are going with the mr cool diy douglas mini split air condition system for the
shop the one i went with is a single stage system i did go with the 36k version since
i do have a pretty large shop my shop is about 1600 square foot total and this system here is
rated for about 1 500 square feet so i think it is going to work out good for me and what i love most
about the mr cool system is that it is the only true full diy mini split system on the market
this is something that you can install yourself and i'm going to be walking you through the whole
process as i go along and do it myself this system is going to come with the outdoor unit
the indoor unit and what sets mr cool apart from other mini split systems on the market it comes
with pre-charged refrigerant lines what that means for you is that you don't have to hire an hvac guy
to come out install this charge your lines for you and all that the lines are pre-charged so all you
have to do is hook them up now mr cool does have a lot of other great features like a wireless system
that allows you to control it from an app on your smartphone now the 36k system does require 240 but
if you don't go with the big one if you go with one of their smaller versions that i believe they
have a 12 16 18 you get a lot of different sizes i believe a lot of those can operate off of 110
just depends on what size you get now before we get in here and start installing this thing if you
haven't done it yet guys make sure you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification
bell and give us a thumbs up that really helps us out now i have been sweating out here for way
too long and i'm ready to start pumping some nice cool air into here so let's get started
the first thing i need to do since i don't have traditional 16 inch on center studs is i need to
build out some studs to put onto the wall so we have somewhere to mount our indoor unit i'm going
to be using the template that mr cool provides as a guide for placement for my studs and then i'm
going to put a piece of plywood over top of that so i have a nice flat area for our mounting plate
then i'm going to use that cardboard template again to mark out the location of our mounting
plate and the three and a half inch hole that we're going to be drilling through the wall
then i just need to fasten the mounting plate to the wall using the provided screws making sure
that we get into our studs now we're ready to go ahead and drill our three and a half inch hole all
the way through the wall for our refrigerant lines for that i'm just going to be using a hole saw
i'm going to start on the inside and then once i have a center hole i can go around
to the outside using that center hole as a guide and go ahead and get all the way through the wall
mr cool gives you a plastic sleeve that you can use to put through the wall
it does come extra long so once you get it through the wall you can go out and cut it down to size
now i'm going to prepare the indoor unit to be mounted to the wall the first thing we need to do
is just straighten out our refrigerant lines now you want to be really careful
when you're doing this and make sure you don't put any kinks in the line
once i have those straightened out i'm just going to use some electrical tape
to hold everything together while we're pushing it through the wall
now we can mount our indoor unit onto the wall and this thing does
have a little weight to it so you want to be extra careful especially if you're taking it
up a ladder but first i'm just going to start to feed those refrigerant lines through the wall
and your unit is going to hang on some tabs on the top of that mounting plate
so you just want to tilt it forward until you can hang it onto those tabs and once you've checked
the alignment then you can just press down on the bottom and it should snap into place
and that's all we need to do for the indoor unit
now i need to get the outdoor unit into place and because i'm doing this by myself
i'm going to be using the tractor to pick it up and carry it around to our concrete pad
now i did do a video on how i made this concrete pad if you want to check
that out i will put a link to that right here at the top of the screen
now first i'm going to put it into place on the slab and i'm going to mark the location
of our holes that we need to drill into the slab to screw this down to screw this down to
the slab i'm going to be using tapcon screws and a hammer drill to pre-drill our holes
then you want to put your unit back into place and you want to use the rubber foot pads that mr
cool provides to put under those feet and then we're just going to screw it down nice and snug
now we're ready to connect our refrigerant lines so we're going to go ahead and unroll this now you
do want to be careful again not to kink it we're just going to straighten out the length that we
need you're just going to need two adjustable wrenches to make that connection and just make
sure you don't cross thread it get it good and tight mr cool does recommend a torque spec for
this but really just want to make sure you're getting it tight enough that you don't have leaks
without over tightening it since the diy unit comes with pre-charged lines you're not able
to cut these lines down to the length that you need so any excess you have you're just
going to want to leave that coiled up and you can hide it right back behind the unit
do
now that i have everything laid out right where i need it we'll go ahead
and connect our refrigerant lines on the other end at the outdoor unit
once everything's connected you can open the end caps on the front of
those valves and you're going to use an allen wrench to open up those refrigerant
lines you're just going to turn it counterclockwise as far as it'll go
and you'll be able to hear as that refrigerant is released into the unit once you have that
done you just replace the caps and it is recommended that you use some soapy water to
spray onto these connections just to check for bubbles and make sure you don't have any leaks
once you're sure you don't have any leaks mr cool provides these anti-vibration
pads that you're going to wrap around each of the
connections so they don't vibrate against each other and make noise
once you've done that you want to replace the insulation over those lines then i'm going to
connect our plastic drain pipe and they give you plenty of drain pipe so i'm going to go ahead and
connect that up here and we're going to wrap the whole thing in uv tape to keep it nice and clean
mr cool does also offer a cover kit that you can get
to put on the outside to cover up these lines and just make it look
a little nicer on the side of your house or your shop or wherever you're using this
i will put a link to that in the description below if you're interested in getting that as well
now we're ready to connect the power cable that comes from the indoor unit now
mr cool has made this pretty much foolproof each of your wires is numbered so all you have to do
is connect the one with the one two with two and three with three
and then they also have clearly marked green screws in there to connect your ground to
hmm all right guys we got our main power run now and this
is the one thing that i did not feel comfortable doing completely by myself
so i did have a professional come out and run the main power from the panel for me this is 240
and you can see we have our transfer switch here on the wall and then a flexible conduit that comes
down and wires into our unit all right guys we have just a couple more things we need to do
there's a couple small air filters here we need to put in our smart usb air controller this is going
to allow us to operate and control our system from our smartphone so once we've plugged this guy in
we should be able to control this unit from anywhere which would be nice because i can
start it up about 30 minutes before i come out here and get everything cooled down
all right guys we should be ready to go so we got our batteries in our remote here let's turn it on
wow now that is already blowing some ice cold air coming out of there i cannot wait
to see how good this does in the shop the outdoor temperature right now is a nice
toasty 100 degrees the temperature inside our shop right now before cutting on the unit is
97. all right guys now while the electrician was here i decided to go ahead and make one other
upgrade and you can see right here behind me we have a new controller on the wall
and that is controlling our new ceiling fans we have in the shop we went with two
ironton ceiling fans from northern tool i will link to those in the description
below those are nice big 56 inch diameter fans i've got them on full blast right now
and just those fans by themselves are already making a pretty big improvement here in the shop
all right guys now we've had this unit pumping for about an hour now we've already gone down from 95
down to 85 so it is doing its job it is going to take a while to work its way down i have it
set on 76 right now but it's working it's blowing some ice cold air right now and guys i am loving
it all right check it out guys it did take a couple more hours to get down to temperature
but it is down to 78 degrees right now that's a huge difference from that 97 when it was in here
earlier it's actually nice and comfortable in the shop i couldn't be happier all right guys that is
it for the install of our mr cool diy mini split system i hope this video helped you out if it did
make sure you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and give us a thumbs
up and don't forget guys we are going to link to this system in the description below if you
want to get one for yourself thanks for watching guys please like share and subscribe and stay cool
you