That's a thing you could have done, cover their window with your AC unit? It seems like something that planning regulations should prevent. And still, they have a loud compressor right next to their window.
Obviously having family in South America where there are millions of these installed by unskilled labor I decided to DIY. So I installed 2 units with 2 heads each, including pouring the concrete pads, vacuuming the line sets, and charging them. Took me two weekends and about $4000 in materials including the units themselves. It’s been two years, none of the BS fear mongering issues have happened, and they have almost paid for themselves.
You do have to go through the permitting process which means having someone come out to view it and write off on it and if you state it properly it should be less than $200.
Managing the lineset is the scary part (though it's not that hard). You're vacuuming copper lines that you've hopefully sealed correctly. If you get that wrong and your refrigerant yeets off into the sky, you have to call in help because it's hard for an unlicensed person to get the refrigerant legally. That half-hour of work and ~$1 of materials will cost you a punitive amount of money.
Ten years ago, I downloaded a free study guide and took the test in-person at an A/C supply shop for about $50.
Today, you can take the test online.
The actual work involved is relatively easy and straightforward. However, the code and regulations are extremely difficult to navigate. There’s a lot of non-obvious things you have to do to be code-compliant.
Similar thing happened for Veterinary care clinics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HVAC/comments/16asntf/lets_talk_abo...
You call for one broken outlet and they pull out fancy branded folders and pens with checklists of every little thing that could possibly be upgraded (inplying its needed for safety) present you with a multi $K bill and then do a little magic 10% discount for some reason to make you think its a good deal.
That said I get my petty revenge by asking questions at the free consult (marketing opportunity) then hiring local guys instead, whenever I cam find them.
This sounds very strange to me. I installed ACs on all three floors in my house in a day. (Not in the US)
NYC is a famously difficult place to have work like this done, especially in a shared-ownership building like a condo. You need your neighbors to agree its okay to do, your board/management company needs to review and be satisfied with the insurance your contractors carry, the city has requirements for electrical that always require permits and often require a master electrician to do the work, and even once the work starts the walls and spaces you're working in aren't exclusively yours and your contractors will be discovering things along the way... plumbing for that spigot you didn't know your neighbor had on their terrace, roof drains, etc.
The process of just getting approval to do work can vary from "chill but time consuming" in small buildings to "impenetrable bureaucracy so don't bother if you're not using the approved vendors" in large co-ops. Once it starts, that master electrician you hired to run the 220v service isn't gonna waste his time repairing drywall, a cheaper subcontractor will do that, and the latency just cranks up from there
I love city living and understand that most of these rules and regulations exist because bad things happened when they didn't - frankly I wouldn't trust most of my neighbors in buildings I've lived in to do their own electrical work or pierce the building's envelope for any reason - but also sort of understand where the outsider's perception that city homeowner life is hard and expensive comes from. It very often is, by comparison.
This article is a perfect example of why I moved out of NYC. Contractors there are more likely to be dishonest, less skilled and more expensive and have insane leverage over rich apartment dwellers who might own a screwdriver but basically have no ability (or permission) to do anything themselves.
Smart, productive people thus have large parts of their lives eaten up dealing with things that are trivial in a large majority of the country because of the density. I decided I’d rather spend my time pursuing my own goals not basic daily comfort.
Take a look at Sensibo. I have one and I'm pretty happy about it.
I say that even though I live in a historic house that I’d hate to see go away.
That said, I’ve spent a fortune bringing it up to modern energy efficiency standards.
The compressor would come on for a few seconds then shut off.
After 2 different HVAC companies quoted me $275 to come out (plus hourly and the repair once they find the issue) and then also told me it would be 10 days before they had availability I finally bit the bullet, bought a $30 multimeter, watched a few videos on how capacitor failure is super common and how to hopefully not kill myself, and after confirming with the multimeter and buying the $7 capacitor everything was right back to working with 2 minutes of work.
I did have a moment where I dreaded thinking I'd need to replace the unit and if so whether I'd want a split put in but for $53K I'd better get a third job... Quite glad not to have had to get too far down this road.
When they came back to check the system for a full quote, the tech felt so bad that they just installed the new capacitor for free and we got another few years out of that boiler.
A quick web search indicates that nyc $/kwh is about 31c. So that’s 3225kwh in one month! My standalone house plus pool pump, dual zone ac, and ev charger doesn’t even come close. Clearly there is a major insulation issue which is the root cause and everything else is just trying to put bandaids on an arterial bleed.
$1,000/month to heat a 3br apartment? Holy crap is he keeping it at sauna temperatures? The most I've ever spent on my poorly-insulated 1960's era bilevel house is about $250.
I lived in an apartment where the floor was poorly insulated. When a new neighbor moved in downstairs that heated their bedroom more aggressively at night, my heating bill went down because the heat rising from below made it less necessary to run my own heating as hard.
It might also be the difference in electricity cost. Especially with tiered rates, you can easily find yourself moving into a higher tier where every kW is significantly more expensive than in the previous tiers. PG&E in the SF Bay Area charges between 43 and 60c/kWh. A 2kW heater is going to cost about $1/hr to run , so if you're working from home, have little kids it gets expensive quick. And in the middle of a NY winter, with a poorly isolated apartment, you might well be running the heat in some capacity pretty much 24/7.
They may also keep the heat higher than most people. There's mention of an au pair so there must be a small child.
Ever spend time in a hotel room with a noisy, rattly AC that turned on and off all the time because it couldn't maintain the temperatures at the set point? Hard to get decent sleep.
It confirms three things for me.
1. Contractor quality is the biggest pain for the adoption of residential green tech.
2. Old homes (if not historic) should get depreciated aggressively by the market to the point that knock downs make sense. Japan does this.
3. DIY is has the hidden benefit of speed/quality/cost, since contractor pain is high. Yes, I understand the massive opportunity costs.
A friend of mine is trying to install a new central heat pump in their home. The only thing stopping them is contractors being hard to work with. Not price.
Here’s my DIY install.
If I remember correctly, I think I found a link from the actual Mitsubishi website linking to it
I would have started figuring this out before spending any money on a mini-split. OP, your climate envelope has failed somewhere. Spend some more money on a IR camera and try and identify where that leak is. Your basically just air-conditioning some of your apartment and some of the outdoors.
a friend paid a similar company the same and the work looks like total garbage, they're didn't even properly set the pad to place the outdoor unit on - and the techs are absolutely clueless about how the systems work
First sentence of the Prologue.
steveBK123•3d ago
righthand•2h ago
My phone dies and the technician says I have to call a locksmith and pay for it myself. Now I’m in small claims court for $1275 no good reason other than my property management company enabling extortion by a locksmith. All they had to do was hire or train someone into being competent lock driller.
Real estate industry in this city is a toxic grift game. People are very nice here, but these real estate people are the “assholes” in which everyone refers. The whole thing is rotten except for maybe 5% of landlords.
simonjgreen•2h ago
That’s nuts though. Imagine a locksmith not being able to pick a lock. Like… you have one job?!
Projectiboga•1h ago
righthand•1h ago
righthand•1h ago
bigbadcity•1h ago
sejje•50m ago
Only the grifters.
silverlake•1h ago