Installing a Mini-Split AC in a Brooklyn Apartment | Probably Dance
Last year, 2024, we replaced four PTACs with a mini-split AC. I’ve been asked about it often enough (by neighbors, coworkers, friends) that I decided to write up the experience. Hopefully it’s useful for you, too.
Overall this cost us about $40k, including the cost for closing up the PTAC holes. We’ll probably never make the money back on electricity cost savings, so the main benefits are that we have more quiet and more stable temperatures now and overall I’m glad that we did it.
(I’ll use the term “heat pump” and “AC” interchangeably. Every “AC” mentioned in here can do both heating and cooling)
We bought this apartment at the end of 2023. The old owner had installed four brand new PTACs at the beginning of 2023 to get ready for selling the apartment. I don’t know the actual reason for this, but I assume the old heaters were nearing their end of life or were broken already. In any case the new thing they installed were really bad. They’re by Islandaire and they’re loud and they are warm-weather heat pumps only. Meaning as soon as you get close to freezing, they switch to backup heat, which was just electric resistive heating. This makes no sense for two reasons: 1. It gets cold in NYC, and 2. we actually had gas pipes leading to these ACs so the backup heat should really be gas. In the winter we would run on backup electric heat for months.
The most expensive electricity bill that year was $1200. Which is a lot for a three bedroom apartment with neighbors above, below, to the left and to the right.
