Recommendation for Air-Con?

[JL1500k]

Yes I visited that forum, and I called up one of the recommended shop Hong Tar (@IMM). They quoted me S$3350 including installation and trunking and pipe! wow! Big deal.

Anyone here heard of this shop before?

Have you try Gain City. eg in IMM

 

[Jason Ho]

Have you try Gain City. eg in IMM

Yes I was quoted more expensive by Gain City sales folks. Around S$3650

Here are a few things that i learnt from the singaporebride forum expert.

- Class 1 installation (insulation) is good enough. Do not go for class 2 and theres no need for Class 0 (industrial requirement)

- For the water pipe, its recommended to go for 16mm instead of 13mm.

- When the copper? pipe is bought to your house for installation, make sure its shiny and not dull color

- Most branded (Mit and Daikin) aircon system 4 comes with around 28,000btu capacity.

Man, i will never get to know about this if I never were to move house :bsmilie:

 

[Tetrode]

I am looking to purchase a 4 split-units Aircon system. I was looking around and I basically zoom down to Daikin, LG, Misubishi.

I plan to install aircon for all my rooms (master bedroom, 2 bedrooms and a study) and my aircon usage each day is high. I heard different things like Inverter and Non-Inverter. And either 1 compressor or 2 compressors. I am at a loss hehe

Appreciate any owner and user of the above 3 brands for your comments on the good and bad (installation, maintenance, energy cost savings, warranty and vendor support and price etc.. )

Thanks

If you use your airconditioner a lot then an invertor system is prefereable as it will reduce your utility costs.

The advantage of having two compressors means that if one fails, you still have the other available. i.e. not having your eggs in one basket. But the operating costs may be higher overall if you have both running at the same time as opposed to running one system. And your up front hardware costs might also be higher.

The brands to consider are Sanyo (very reliable and easy to repair - advice given to me by several aircon maintainence guys from different companies), Mitsubishi (easy to repair), and Toshiba (Quiet and Cools fast - they invented the invertor system - they also bought over the Carrier group).

Avoid Fujitsu/Fuji Air/LG as they tend to become quite noisy after a short while.

As for Daikin, you pay a premium for the name but they are no better or worse than the top three I mentioned.

 

[Tetrode]

Yes I was quoted more expensive by Gain City sales folks. Around S$3650

Here are a few things that i learnt from the singaporebride forum expert.

- Class 1 installation (insulation) is good enough. Do not go for class 2 and theres no need for Class 0 (industrial requirement)

- For the water pipe, its recommended to go for 16mm instead of 13mm.

- When the copper? pipe is bought to your house for installation, make sure its shiny and not dull color

- Most branded (Mit and Daikin) aircon system 4 comes with around 28,000btu capacity.

Man, i will never get to know about this if I never were to move house :bsmilie:

WRT to installation - you get what you pay for.

Don't skim on install costs. The difference between a good installation and bad one can mean either no worries or lots of headaches for you in the years to come.

Plan and run the piping so that no joins are necessary in the gas (copper) piping. Joins in the water pipes are unavoidable bec they are made of PVC and are made to a certain length.

Try and make your piping runs as short as possible. Pay the installer to come down to survey the site and discuss the various options available to you before the actual install. It might cost you $50-80 to do this or they may do it for free but it is worth the extra effort. And install the piping before your contractor does his carpentary or cornice work. This is so that you don't have unsightly exposed trunking running all over the place.

The aircon installers would normally would prefer shorter runs but may opt for a longer way if there is less hassle (quicker) to for them to run it the longer way. So don't get conned - get them to the best way possible even it means more work for them.

 

[Lmodel]

On aircon installation, an average set of aircon system should be able to last you through at least 10 years. I recently replaced my 19 yrs old Daikin for a Mitsubishi system 3. I'd say my Daikin has served me well during the first 10 years of its life. Nevertheless, all electronic components have a shell life and parts start to breakdown after that. It is only recent that my compressor stops working totally and it is darn expensive to replace it!

I'm got a none inverter system because I have extremely low usage of my aircon (approx. 2 hrs/ day). The extra costs is not justifiable from the savings of the electric bills. You will only save for long usage hours (e.g. 8hrs daily) but insignificant when you uses very little of it.

Another more important thing is the CONTRACTOR whom is engaged to install your aircon. Many of these contractors for the BIG COMPANIES have very low margin and are based on quantities. Quantities and quality don't really see eye to eye with each other. You'll be surprised that they are able to install 2 systems a day!

Much as possible, avoid these companies if you can. Getting a reliable and knowledgable aircon contractor is more important than the brand of aircon you choose. Even with the best brand of aircon, chances are your aircon will give you endless of problems if you get a wrong contractor to install it for you. A good contractor will advise you on how pipings should be lay to prevent water from choking, etc. and not one who would just install anywhere you wanted to. The costs of recurring on-site servicing could end up hurting you more than the costs of the aircon and gives you the impression that the brand of aircon sucks.

BTU represents the cooling power for aircon system. A standard room should require at least 6000BTU to 7000BTU and around 9,000BTU to 12,000BTU for a living room. Work out an average BTU that you require or you end up paying more on electricity bills.

 

[dreamseeker]

Try to ask for Armaflex class 1 insulation. Some shops will ask you to pay more, some shops say included in price.

Actually 13 or 16 mm no difference. Most of the time the choke in the drain pipe occurs in the flexible hose linking your air con drain to the pvc pipe. Using a bigger pipe may also cause you to use bigger trunking.

Copper pipes normally comes in some fixed length. Cant remember off-hand. Try not to use any joints.

When i was shopping around for my air-con, most shops would recommend Sanyo cos it is cheaper. But some pp say cos the shop profit margin is higher. Also if not mistaken, the Sanyo inverters system does not have a 4 star/tick rating. Cos they never put it on their air-con.

Normally if use 2 compressor types, 2 rooms would be connected to 1 compressor while the other 2 rooms connected to other. So if 1 go up lorry, 2 room would be cool only.

My own preference would be expose trunking. easy for me to do maintenance or for the air-con guys to do repair work if they did a lousy job in the 1st place. Unless you let your reno contractor bao the air-con works, you wouldnt want to tear out cornices, carpentry work if there is leakage.

 

[Virgo]

Have you considered Sanyo? It's way cool. In terms of energy saving, you probably won't notice the difference, cos all air-cons takes up loads of them!

In terms of reliability, no issues. Have been using it for 8 years now. No service done before, just simple cleaning of filters myself. Still works as new.

I was told by my friend don't get inverter air-cons, cos if it fails, your pocket also inverted! :bsmilie:

 

[dEthANGeL]

Ok .. i sense a brand bashing about to begin :bsmilie:

1 of my units which i'm using - fujitsu / general ... is about 6 years old. Its a single split but i beg to differ it to be noisy. Instead, its even quieter than my neighbour's sanyo/carrier/panasonic which are much newer... condensing unit is just a very quiet hum. Fancoil - small quiet and powerful despite its size.

And yes.. I have to agree, sanyo WAS good in the past (hence some places with units still running after all these years from the 1990s or so) ... those were the good batches, even the aircon contractor i spoke to for my office swore by sanyo as being good in the past.. but sadly due to costs, like the rest, their lifespan are relatively the same or shorter as the rest of the competing brands.

As for drainage piping ... its usually how big your unit is. I've got 2 18,000 BTU fancoils and their pipes are larger than normal due to the amount of water each fancoil drains out. But if all your fancoils drainage commons out to 1 single drainage pipe, then it makes more sense to use bigger pipes since you mentioned at any 1 time, > 1 unit will be running - 2 9,000 BTU fancoils in my home already drains out quite alot of water for its size.

As mentioned before trunking wise, a good contractor should advise you how to run your exposed trunkings as poor insulation for copper pipings and drainage pipes would result in sweating to the exterior of the trunking (if that room's aircon is not usually on or is hot)

Armaflex class 1 insulations as mentioned before should be the industry standard for quality - but not brands like superlon. I've got a couple of units installed, latest being by gain city, which warrants their installation and did a very good job second comes coolserve, sadly, you get what you pay for, they used superlon insulation which resulted in sweating of the trunking causing ugly black sweat marks on the trunkings on the exterior of the building, the aircon bracket too isn't too good after being weathered for 2 years.

 

[Spectrum]

BTU represents the cooling power for aircon system. A standard room should require at least 6000BTU to 7000BTU and around 9,000BTU to 12,000BTU for a living room. Work out an average BTU that you require or you end up paying more on electricity bills.

Some questions to ask here. Does that mean the colder the temperature it produce justify by the BTU? As I also realised that some air-con can go as low to 16 degree C & some lowest at 18 degree C? Advise please? Thanks

 

[alwayschampion]

I miss out Sanyo. Sanyo is good in terms of cooling performance (cools the place fast) and strong wind. The design of the fan blade is big, therefore there is some significant sound/noise. It is also durable and reliable.

 

[Lmodel]

Some questions to ask here. Does that mean the colder the temperature it produce justify by the BTU? As I also realised that some air-con can go as low to 16 degree C & some lowest at 18 degree C? Advise please? Thanks

Cooling rate is not exactly quite like temperature. E.g. a blower that supports 9,000 BTU can cool a room to 23 deg in X mins but a blower that supports only 7,000 BTU needs X + Y time to cool to the same temperature.

In short, the graph plotted should be temp against time. Going to temp like 16 deg or 18 deg is usually preset by the factory.

Cheers

 

[Spectrum]

Cooling rate is not exactly quite like temperature. E.g. a blower that supports 9,000 BTU can cool a room to 23 deg in X mins but a blower that supports only 7,000 BTU needs X + Y time to cool to the same temperature.

In short, the graph plotted should be temp against time. Going to temp like 16 deg or 18 deg is usually preset by the factory.

Cheers

Thank you very much for the explanation dude.