Central Air Installation - Leave It To The Pros!

Not an ordinary DIYer project, when I decided to install central heating and air conditioning in my house I must have been out of my mind.

With a small arsenal of HVAC (Heating Ventilation & A/C) literature behind my belt coupled with a decidedly obstinate eagerness to complete the project on my own, I committed myself to the task. I was confident I could do it - equivocally. In retrospect it was a success. What's more, it only took me 192 hours!

A summary of the work involved follows. First, take a look at the before and after photos of the equipment in the attic.

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Before Photo: Attic HVAC equipment after installing the mounting pad on the ceiling joists

After Photo: The behemoth residing in attic.

The chronicles: I installed an air diffuser (vent) into each room in the house. Each is connected by flexible ductwork the the behemoth.

Installing the diffusers is no easy task in cement plaster ceilings

I may not have completed the task without the uplift of an occasional acoustic serenade (Omar 'Leonel' Garza is a talented singer/songwriter who just released an amazing album: 'La Garza').

I cut a really big hole in the cement ceiling for the return air vent...

...and built a gypsum board plenum box extending from the ceiling into the attic where it connects to a 16" flexible return duct.

My qualified electrician added a 220v/60amp circuit for the exterior condensing unit and a 110v/15amp circuit serving the air handler/furnace - the behemoth - in the attic.

In the center of the photo below is the return plenum box with the return duct attached. Also pictured are the individual supply ducts and the flue which enables the furnace to exhaust through the roof

Much crawling underneath the raised floor was required. It is a tight fit!

The white pipe below is the condensate line for the fan coil. It ties into the drain I installed for the claw foot bathtub above the floor.

At the top of the photo below are the refrigerant lines for the fan coil unit. At the bottom is the rigid steel gas line. I confess, I was mildly nervous about cutting in the gas line. No explosions yet. I ran each these lines from under the house up to the unit in attic through the closet.

192 hours. Right, so that was pretty easy.