Cheap Chinese Mini-Splits: Worth It?

[Swamp_Yankee]

Seems these days that the market is flooded with cheap Chinese mini-splits with a million different names (my guess is that they are made by a handful of manufacturers) that are skewed to the DIY market.  Unlike the major brands like Mitsubishi, Sanyo, etc...which usually carry a disclaimer of "warranty will not apply unless installed by a licensed technician," they are marketed to be installed by a DIY'er who then goes out and hires an HVAC guy to vacuum and charge them.  I'm curious to hear from anyone who has installed one of these "off brand" units and how they fared.  

We have a 2600 SF house that is a mishmosh of original construction and additions going back about 200 years.  The good news is that the previous owner put a large second floor addition on in 1998 with a walk up attic.  I have plenty of room to mount concealed duct units to feed the six rooms that need cooling up there.  I plan on using a three zone system, probably 36K BTU, and splitting the supply and return for each with short runs, each unit serving rooms that are adjacent.  I'm also planning on locating a heavy duty whole house dehumidifier in the attic as well with one supply on one end of the house and one return on the other end of the house for a few reasons.  First, I've read a lot about how supplemental dehumidification can really take a load off of your AC units, second, humidity, rather than temperature tends to make our house the most uncomfortable.  We are pretty deep in the woods with substantial shade to the south, so as long as the humidity level is low, the house is pretty comfortable, even on the second floor up to about 85°F.  On the other hand, when the humidity level is high, it can be pretty miserable in the mid 70s.  The downside of course is that dehumidifiers heat the air somewhat, but the two working in tandem with the dehumidifier handling most of the moisture removal and the concealed duct units simply cooling the air, should work well.  I'm only going to do the upstairs this year, so perhaps there will be lessons learned before I do the downstairs.

[tjfslaughter]

An installer friend of mine likes Fujitsu or something like that.


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[tjfslaughter]

In my addition I am doing a luxeaire unit. I will also do 90 percent of install. Think about lifting outside unit up a couple feet if you are going to use the heat pump feature.


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