i feel sorry for those who had a split system aircon installed in the philippines because i just found out they don't vacuum the system to remove moisture or condensates during installation. moisture can reduce the performance and cause higher electricity consumption. it can also corrode your system which can easily damage your system in 5 years. with proper vacuuming your system can easily last 20 years. i just had a 2.5hp split inverter installed and i asked the installer where is his vacuum pump? he said they don't vacuum when they install they just purge out the air before closing the system. he did get nervous and called his boss. his boss immediately asked him to get the vacuum from their office and vacuum my system.
then i asked where is their micron gauge and metal tubings for the vacuuming? he said they just use the manifold gauge which i'm not even sure is vacuum rated. the installer tried to fool me and show me the vacuum held 29 hg for 30 minutes which is ridiculous. but at that point i just gave up and felt sorry for the installer because maybe he has kids to feed and send to school. so i just pretended to be content. but the truth is that you are suppose to vaccum to at least 200 microns and let it stand for 30 minutes and if it goes beyond 500 microns you need to vacuum some more. but 200 microns is 29.91 hg and 500 microns is 29.90 hg and the most precise marking in the manifold gauge is 2 hg which is about 1 mm wide which means even if the vacuum leaked back to 10 thousand microns i still won't be able to notice it with my naked eye.
my hope is that maybe it's not that bad because the system already came pre-charged with freon and i'm sure it was perfectly vacuumed in the factory so the only moisture would be in the lines and evaporator. but i checked the hvac forums and they did say vacuuming is very important even on pre-charged systems.
they also did not use nitrogen flow while brazing the lines to prevent soot contaminant from forming inside the line. but i would just let that go hoping my system has a filter that would probably filter out the soot.
i was in the hardware store the other day and saw my tita sit sit buying light bulbs. they own the properties around redemptorist area (unchuan clan). i asked her how long their split ac systems usually last and she warned me not to buy those because they only last 5 years. she told me it's better to buy the big wall airconditioners. BOOM !!! my theory just got confirmed.
i think it's worth it to pay to have your split system evacuated, vacuumed then recharged. i think my elementary school classmate luis moro owns a business that does this. i actually documented in my blog my experience in vacuuming a split system. just search "ian's knowledge bombs" on the net then search "replacing-my-ac" in the table of contents.
i found an article in the internet that the inverter would save you 30% on electricity compared to a non inverter so i did an experiment to test this. on a hot day, i turned off all the breaker switches except the one for my 2.5hp split inverter. i took a photo of our electric meter, let the aircon run for an hour setting it to 16C to simulate the worst case scenario, then calculated the kwh usage. as you see in the photo it moved 1 kwh. the last electric bill showed that the electric company charges about P12.4 / kwh so it costs roughly P12.4 / hr to run my 2.5 hp system. but note that 1 hp is about 746 watts so 2.5hp X 746 = 1,865 watts. so divide this by 1000 it is suppose to consume 1.865 kwh with a non inverter. multiply by P12.4 we get P23 per hour. so it's actually about 50% savings, not 30%. i then tested the 1hp non inverter wall ac in the other room and it consumed about 0.6 kwh so it cost about P7.44 / hr to run a 1hp non inverter. i also tested the 0.6 hp non inverter wall ac in the other room and it consumed about 0.25 kwh so it cost about P3.1 / hr to run. if i get a 0.6 hp inverter, using the conservative range of 30% savings, it would only cost me P2.17/hr. the savings is P0.91/hr. if i run it for 24 hours a day, i will save P21.8 a day or P655 a month or P7,862 a year. this means it will take a year to recover the extra cost of an inverter and start reaping the benefit.
(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)
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