Air-Source Mini-Split AC on town house top floor

[HelpImMelting]

I live in a town house with my bedroom on the top floor. It is ridiculously hot but I have always considered home air conditioning as a super expensive luxury that is well out of my reach.

I've recently read that it would be possible to install something called an air-source mini-split system, only in my bedroom (and hidden in the loft), without selling an organ/remortgaging the house.

Has anyone done this and can tell me if it was worth it?

Theyre pretty popular for loft conversions, youll obviously need somewhere for the outdoor unit though. The pipework can be hidden in the loft but the outdoor unit needs to go, obviously, outdoors

Depends if you’re in a conservation area - you may need pp but you can get an all in one pump
with no external unit. You will need a plug and a competent diy’er and it has to be on an external wall.

This is probably some of the worst advise ive ever heard.
Yes, the units come precharged so I suppose technically a "competant diyer" could do it but they require massive core hole, the size of dinner plates minimum and are complete shit. No competant ac installer would touch one

I’ve just had an aircon quote. For five internal rooms (basically all bedrooms) with two external units ( one serving three rooms and the other serving two rooms) it is £13k. It’s a bit more than I was expecting (I’d thought £10k) The two units would sit on the balconies

The way it was described to me, I could have something called a concealed ducted unit without anything on the outside of the house. And it would cost around £1,000 plus installation - I would definitely use a professional installer.

I'd just never heard of this option before.

Ducted units are great if you dont want the bulky wall mounts but they still need an outdoor unit. Ive never come across ducted units without one

@Singleandtired Thank you, looks like I didn't Google hard enough! But that's not a show stopper for me if it's worth it.

A mini split system does require an outdoor unit and would be something like this:

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/dcpro-wz12/lg-dcprowz12-air-conditioner

You can buy them pre-gassed (at a price) so that a competent DIY-er could install them IF he or she can safely work at the height of the outdoor installation and can safely install the outdoor electrics, but most are not and need an F-gas accredited installer. Quite a few of them are also specced for 16 amp electric circuits rather than 13A domestic ring mains.

If you are looking for something with no outdoor unit, you'll be thinking of something like this:

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/ct/heating-and-air-conditioning/air-conditioners/wall-mounted/no-outdoor-unit
or
https://www.argoclima.com/en/prodotti/argo-apollo-12hp/

We have the Argoclima units at our place in Portugal. These are DIY-able as long as you have the tools to tunnel through your wall, twice, and your inside wall can support the 36kg weight of them. They come as a single unit and plug straight into the ring main. They are effective and whilst all that is visible from the outside are two vents each about 20cm in diameter they are not especially cheap and are phenomenally noisy, even louder than the window AC units common in Asia and roughly on a par with the worst of the portable ones. My wife keeps turning them off in the middle of the night, which isn't helpful at all. They are much better than nothing, but they weren't our choice and, given the choice, we'd have gone for split level systems every time.

Here in the UK we had AC put in last year by a local (Manchester) firm which supplied and installed them: £12,400 all-in for three outdoor units powering six indoor ones.

This is very interesting, thank you - what temp can the Argoclima get the room to? I don’t care about noise much but I do want the cooling to be right down to 18C if it’s at all possible!

Honestly, I couldn't tell you. We tend to set it to 23 or 24C during the summer and it has no trouble reaching and maintaining that, but cooling a room in Portugal to 18C in summer would be madness.