PerfectAire bought via Home Depot online.

Very quiet. Like almost unnoticeable, even the compressor unit is almost silent. Maybe that changes when it gets hot but it’s been rainy and cool for the last week so it wasn’t exactly getting a workout. Can’t be any noisier than the PAM unit it replaces.

It has wifi with some app called ConnectLife that has a Home Assistant integration available, but I couldn’t seem to get it to hook up to my wifi, it just sets up an AP I can connect to with the app, and then fails to find any wifi networks to let me connect it to permanently. It says in the manual that it’ll only connect to 2.4GHz networks, but I have both frequencies active on my router, and no dice. I’m not really heartbroken about that, I can use the remote. I might try turning it off and on again and see if it smartens up.

The extra lineset is just coiled next to the condensor, you can’t shorten it or you’d have to flare-fit the ends, and evac and charge it. It’s fine where it is, I had maybe 6’ of extra which is a couple coils. They’re ziptied to the joists of the decking above it.

Might have taken 8 or 10 hours to put in with the electrical since I had to rearrange my breaker box a bit to free up a slot for a 20A double pole. I do have to anchor the unit down yet but it doesn’t vibrate or anything so I wasn’t too worried about it. It would have been much faster if I could have just gone through an outside wall and had the condenser mounted on the wall or a sidewalk block under it. But I had to open up a hole in the stairwell ceiling and work inside a cramped spiderwebby cubbyhole, then crawl under a deck to put the condenser under there and lay on my side to do up the connections and wire it. I’d say 6 hours if just going through the wall and if electrical was easier.

Say 2800 with the time? Which is less than just the install price I was quoted to put one in, let alone the cost of the unit.

Completely charged. The linesets are evacuated and the compressor and head unit are precharged. If you use more than the 25’ lineset they come with, then you might have to add freon. While I do have the tools and freon around to add some if I needed as I often do AC work on my ag equipment, I didn’t have to use any. They recommend adding a certain amount if you have to use additional lineset though.

The fittings all have a dual o-ring sealing system and you can hear them pressurize when you tighten them up. Once you have it all together, you open the valves on the compressor to open the loop.

You basically check for studs, tape the pattern for the head unit to the wall where you want it, drill the lineset hole and screw the mount on. Push the lineset bundle through the wall and clip the head unit to the mount. Bend the lineset carefully so you don’t kink the copper but that seems harder to fuck up than you would think. They bend fairly nice.

If you aren’t familiar with electrical, you might want to have that done for you, but I’ve done my own electrical work for years so I wasn’t too worried about that. But you definitely don’t need to be an HVAC tech to put these in, it’s dead simple.