How Long Does a Ductless Mini Split Installation Take (Video)

Mike Cappuccio with Jones Services explains how long it takes to install a ductless mini split. He says that most installations take a day but can take up to three days in complex situations. He covers the factors that affect installation timing.

Hi, I’m Mike Cappuccio with Jones Services. Today I’m here to talk to you about how long does it take to install a ductless system in my home.

Well, it’s probably the first question you get asked after the contract is signed — how long is this going to take to do? When can you do it? And a lot of things play into those factors. I’m going to explain to you some of the things that we are going to do and some of the things that the homeowner’s going to have to do to not delay the project as well. Let’s get at it.

First thing, one zone, one indoor unit, one outdoor unit, basically on a first floor or a second floor of a home. The unit’s going on the exterior wall, that’s going to be one guy, maybe two guys, one day, depending on height restrictions and things that they would have to work with there.

Now, if you’re in a brick building or a concrete building and we’ve got to core drill a hole, it could still be one day, depending on how thick the wall is, but if we’re relying on a sub to come out and core the hole or if we’re coring the hole, that could be a day and a half, depending on what’s going to happen. I want you to figure that at a minimum one indoor unit takes about eight hours to install. Now, that could be with one man or a two-man crew, depending. Most times we send a two man crew.

Let’s talk about a multi zone now. Multi zone, we’ve got three indoor units that have to be installed into a home, maybe two indoor units that are going to be installed in a home. Two indoor units in a home can most times get done in one day with two guys, it’s usually not a problem. Sometimes three indoor units in one home can get installed in one day, depending on the complexity of the home.

Again, most times that could be done in one day, at the most two. When we’re getting into the four zone, five zone systems, again, let’s start figuring on eight hours per indoor unit, two-man crew, four to five units, two days, maybe three days max, depending if there’s duct work involved, if we’re doing ducted systems and we’re putting ductwork in attics, that’s probably going to go into a three-day project at that time with two men for that crew.

Now, some of the things that the homeowners can do to help speed up the process so that we can be in and out of the house in one to three days, depending on what you’re doing, is giving us free, clear access to the areas that we’re going to be working in. Now, what do I mean by that? Let’s say we’re putting a unit on an exterior wall and below that unit is a china cabinet, let’s say, and it’s full of dishes and glass and stuff like that. Well, we can’t work in front of that, that would need to be moved. That would be discussed with the homeowner prior to the installation happening. We would expect these items to be moved on the day before the installation, that they would be removed to give us clean, clear, free access to where we’re going.

A lot of times, if you’re working in basements and we’re doing larger systems with branch boxes and the branch boxes are being put in the basement of a home and you’ve lived in your home for 40, 50 years and you’ve accumulated all kinds of stuff into your basement, we’re going to need access to where we’re going to be bringing the pipes into the basement, in the areas where we’re going to be running the pipes along the basement.

Again, we’re going to be asking the homeowners prior to this, please move these items from where we’re going to need to be working, because otherwise that’s going to just slow the project down. If you’ve got eight hours of moving stuff, that’s going to delay the project to get done in the amount of time that we’re trying to do.

Access to your electrical panels… A lot of times, two, three-family homes might sometimes be in common areas where a door could be locked or things like that, where we don’t have full access to the electrical panels. We ask that we get those doors unlocked prior to the installation, before coming out.

Outside the home, giving us free, clear access to park our vehicles if possible is important. If parking is an issue, could we get parking? Can we park in your driveway? Can we not park in your driveway?

Then outside, where are we placing the condenser? If we’ve agreed that, okay, we’re going to put the condenser here and there might be a little shrub or a bush there and it’s the homeowner’s responsibility to remove the shrub of the bush, again, we would want that removed the day before the installation is going to happen, or before that, because it’s only going to delay the project when we come out there.

If you start digging the shrub out the next day and you find out that there’s 10-foot roots and you can’t get it out and we have to come back that two or three days later, there could be change orders issued for that because our schedules are planning for two and three days to get this installation done in a consecutive timeframe.

We ask that the homeowner does their part, we do our part. Obviously, weather can slow things down a little bit, heavy rain, snow, things like that, but we try to watch the 10-day forecast, be as accurate as we can to try to get the job done in a speedy, efficient way so it gives a good experience to the homeowner and everybody leaves happy.