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DIY split installation success
Monday, January 22 2024
Late this morning I drove the Forester over to Van Kleeck's Tires to get an inspection and what might be the first oil change we'd ever gotten for the car (which we've had since December of 2021). Gretchen doesn't like what she claims is the red-state politics of Van Kleeck's, though if this is the case it wasn't much in evidence today. Say what you want to about Van Kleeck's, but they're a huge improvement over Mavis Discount Tire, a shop that always came up with expensive additional things wrong with any of the cars we ever brought them. And then when they'd "fix" the problem (famously the shocks on our old Honda Civic Hybrid), they would end up worse. At Van Kleeck's, they just do what you ask them to, which makes taking vehicles there relatively stress-free. Of course, it helps that we no longer drive beaters. It took about an hour for the guys to process the Forester, and I spent the time reading all my usual websites on my phone while drinking complimentary coffee (which was better than expected). In the end, Van Kleeck's did exactly what I wanted them to, didn't find anything I didn't want to hear about, and the Forester passed inspection.
I noticed that at some point in the last year or so, New York State's inspection stickers changed format. In the past there used to be the names of months running around the sticker's perimeter and the inspector would punch a hole in the name of the month it was due to be re-inspected. In practice, this made it impossible to tell from a distance anything but the year (due to the sticker's color) of when the sticker expired. This allowed us to drive around with a inspection stickers that had been expired for months. In the new format, the sticker has the month and year of expiration printed in fairly large numbers on it, meaning that New York now has to print separate inspection stickers for every month. But this makes it more likely for a cop to see the number of the month and catch people driving around like we used to do.
Back at the house, Charlotte kept running out into the road, something she hadn't done in months. I think this was Neville's bad influence, as he went snuffling out to the end of the driveway and she followed him. And then she probably chased a bird, which is something she likes to do. She runs so quickly that it seems she might be able to catch one. To get Charlotte away from the road, I convinced her to walk with me to the end of the Farm Road and then west up the escarpment (covered with about an inch of snow) and then back homeward. This marked the first time I'd ever managed to get Charlotte to walk with just me without my needing to bribe her with peanuts.
Unexpectedly in the mail today came a set of adapters allowing me to hook my vacuum pump to the mini-split. I'd seen estimated dates of arrival even from Amazon that would be at the end of the week and was sure it would take at least until Wednesday, but here they were! So I watched a video of how to evacuate a mini-split and then hooked up the pipes, the gauge manifold, and the vacuum pump and started pumping out the air. On my first attempt, I misunderstood how the gauge manifold was plumbed, so I had to do it a second time. And that time, after an hour or more of checking a gauge, all indications were that my refrigerant lines were not leaking.
By this point Gretchen had returned from her bookstore shift and was making some sort of dinner from leftovers (I was hoping to avoid the noodle bake, which I managed to do). Now it was time to make preparations for adding refrigerant, though the instructions were a little vague about how much to add or even what kind of refrigerant it was supposed to take. I'd bought a bottle containing two pounds of R410A, but the instructions were giving me numbers for different types of refrigerant. It's always less than ideal when instructions are written for a spectrum of products, especially if it's not clear which one you happen to have. (This is a surprisingly common problem; I know a fair amount about vehicles, for example, and I know that there are models of Subaru Forester with different engine sizes. But I have no idea how to determine which one I have. It isn't stated anywhere in the vehicle that I can see.) I followed some instructions to open some valves (producing an internal hissing sound) and then went to remove a hose, at which point a small amount of refrigerant that must've come bottled up inside the outdoor unit sprayed on my right middle finger. It was so cold that a patch near its tip immediately went numb. I went inside and dipped it in warm water. When I told Gretchen about this, she did a Google search that suggested that if spilled refrigerant rendered any part of the body numb, one should contact poison control. I wasn't doing that, but now I was concerned. Fortunately, after about a half hour or so, the numbness completely dissipated.
Now that I knew that the split came partially-charged with some sort of refrigerant, I began to worry whether or not it was R410A, as the instructions said that refrigerant types were not to be mixed (that makes sense!). Since the instructions and the devices were unclear about the type of refrigerant I was to use, I went out and looked at the box, and only there was the specific refrigerant (happily R410A) mentioned. It even had verbiage suggesting the system came with all the refrigerant it needed except for the extra needed in the connecting refrigerant lines. This explained some of the vague wording in the instructions. I soon calculated that I needed to add 300 grams of R410A to the system, and this proved to be a surprisingly easy and fast process. (I used one of Gretchen's kitchen scales to help with this.)
With all that out of the way, it was time to flip on the circuit and see how it ran. It took a couple minutes once it was running to produce heat, but when it did, the heat was solid. I told Gretchen that the split was installed, and she was amazed. She actually had some work to do at her desk in that room (she's now training an artificial intelligence to write short stories) and with the heat working, she could finally do it in comfort.
Later this evening, though, I noticed what looked to be leaked oil below one of the flare fittings that my vacuum test had assured me was air-tight. So now I had that to fret about.
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