What to Expect on Installation Day

What to have sorted before we arrive

Very little is asked of you, but a few things save an hour.

• Clear the wall where the indoor unit goes, and about a metre either side of it
• Clear the wall on the far side too, if the pipework is running through it
• Clear the working area around where the outdoor unit is going, so we are not moving your garden or your bins to get a ladder up
• Make sure we can reach the switchboard
• Tell us in advance about a locked side gate, meter box or strata carpark barrier, rather than on the morning
• Shut anything nervous in a back room, because there will be drilling, doors will be open for periods, and the power goes off while the circuit is connected
• Have somewhere in mind for the old unit, if one is being removed

How the day actually runs

A straightforward single head install is generally most of a day rather than the half hour people imagine. Multiple heads or a ducted system runs over more than one day, and we tell you which before we start.

Those are working estimates rather than promises. Wall construction and access move them more than the number of heads does.

The indoor unit’s bracket goes up and gets levelled, because a head mounted out of level will drip. A core hole is drilled through the wall for the pipework, drain and interconnecting cable, and that is the noisiest and dustiest part of the day. We drop sheets and vacuum it rather than leaving dust for you.

Outside, the bracket or stand is fixed to structure, the unit is mounted, and the refrigerant pipework is run between the two, flared or brazed, then the electrical work is done and the drain is run to a sensible discharge point.

The steps that decide whether it lasts

This is the part you cannot see and it is where installers differ most.

Where joints are brazed, dry nitrogen should be flowing through the pipe while the heat is applied. Without it, the inside of the copper oxidises and forms loose black scale, which later travels around the circuit and blocks the expansion valve or the strainer. That failure turns up a year or two later and looks like a gas fault.

Then the system is pressure tested with nitrogen, and evacuated with a vacuum pump. A proper evacuation is measured with a micron gauge and held, so you can see whether the reading stays down or climbs back, which proves whether moisture and leaks are actually gone. Pulling a vacuum for a set number of minutes by the clock and calling it done proves nothing. Moisture left in a system reacts with the oil and slowly damages the compressor.

The drain gets water poured through it and watched, rather than assumed.

Commissioning and handover

At the end the system is started, the charge is verified, and supply and return air temperatures are measured across the indoor unit. That gives a baseline you can compare against later if performance ever seems to drop off, and we write the numbers down for you rather than keeping them.

You get shown the controller properly, the filters, how to take them out and wash them, and what the modes actually do. Rubbish and packaging leaves with us.

If this is a system going in where an old one came out, the removal and the assessment of the existing pipework are covered under air conditioning replacement.

More detail on the work itself is on split system installation in Cairns. To book or ask about access, call 0489 266 523.