Kevin Herber
05-12-2005, 9:57 AM
The summers down here in Central Texas are brutal. High temps and high humidity. In the past I have stayed out of the garage/shop pretty well from mid-April to September. I finally decided to do something about it. The problem is that I live in condo and cannot put any holes in the walls for a permanent A/C installation like I did at my last house where I put a window unit in the wall.
I ran across an installation of a ‘ductless, mini-split’ A/C setup at a local business. The system is similar to a full central system. It has an inside cooler/air handler and an outside condenser. In normal installations the units are separated by the walls of the building so I wondered “Why can’t the garage door be the wall?”
I had a mounting device put together that is like a very large hand truck (two wheeler). The bottom plate is 30” by 30” of ¼ inch steel. The upright is six feet tall and made out of 1 ½ inch square tubing and located along one side of the bottom plate. Picture a large ‘L’ shaped setup.
I mounted the outside unit on the front lip of the plate. The inside air handler is at the top of the upright. The garage door comes down between the two units creating the wall.
I catch the condensate in a five gallon bucket and use it to water plants.
When I am finished using the system I turn off the unit, unplug the power, open the garage door, tilt the whole thing forward and place a furniture dolly under it. Then I just roll it to it’s parking place in the garage until next time. It runs on 120volts. I put an outlet at the front corner of the shop and on its own circuit.
After the A/C guy charged the system we fired it up. The system works better than I expected. Yesterday the temp was mid 80’s with very high humidity. It pulled the shop temp down to 67 degrees and removed 3+ gallons of water over 5 hours. There is hardly any noise. The ouside unit is quieter than my my Fein vac. I can stand next to the inside unit and talk on the phone and the person on the other end cannot hear the fan – even on high.
I still have some door bottom seal work to do. The gap is a little too big. After that it should be even better. I am also putting together some filters to keep the sawdust from being sucked into the air handler. Rick Wynn at Wynn Environmental gave me some good advice on filters. I’ll post pics when I am finished.
I’m a cool and happy camper!!
-- Kevin
I ran across an installation of a ‘ductless, mini-split’ A/C setup at a local business. The system is similar to a full central system. It has an inside cooler/air handler and an outside condenser. In normal installations the units are separated by the walls of the building so I wondered “Why can’t the garage door be the wall?”
I had a mounting device put together that is like a very large hand truck (two wheeler). The bottom plate is 30” by 30” of ¼ inch steel. The upright is six feet tall and made out of 1 ½ inch square tubing and located along one side of the bottom plate. Picture a large ‘L’ shaped setup.
I mounted the outside unit on the front lip of the plate. The inside air handler is at the top of the upright. The garage door comes down between the two units creating the wall.
I catch the condensate in a five gallon bucket and use it to water plants.
When I am finished using the system I turn off the unit, unplug the power, open the garage door, tilt the whole thing forward and place a furniture dolly under it. Then I just roll it to it’s parking place in the garage until next time. It runs on 120volts. I put an outlet at the front corner of the shop and on its own circuit.
After the A/C guy charged the system we fired it up. The system works better than I expected. Yesterday the temp was mid 80’s with very high humidity. It pulled the shop temp down to 67 degrees and removed 3+ gallons of water over 5 hours. There is hardly any noise. The ouside unit is quieter than my my Fein vac. I can stand next to the inside unit and talk on the phone and the person on the other end cannot hear the fan – even on high.
I still have some door bottom seal work to do. The gap is a little too big. After that it should be even better. I am also putting together some filters to keep the sawdust from being sucked into the air handler. Rick Wynn at Wynn Environmental gave me some good advice on filters. I’ll post pics when I am finished.
I’m a cool and happy camper!!
-- Kevin