The first thing is most of the time, they don’t even buy the right size unit. They don’t even know what size unit they need in their house, and they went on some calculator online and figured out, “Okay, this is what– The internet is telling me what I need in my house,” and it doesn’t even know what it truly needs. So when doing it this way you’re just going by the square footage, There’s no load calculation’s that has been done. Nothing’s been done. Sometimes, they don’t even know if it’s the right power for their home, for the do-it-yourself. A lot of these do-it-yourself online sellers are over in China. When you look at the power that they use overseas– I don’t know if you’ve ever been overseas, but I just got back– you can’t plug your cell phone into the wall. You need an adapter.

Everything is different electricity, different hertz, different power. A lot of these online sellers, they’re selling equipment that’s being used in the European markets. It gets to the homeowner’s house, the do-it-yourselfer looks at it. They don’t know the difference, that it’s 50 hertz versus 60 hertz. 60 hertz is what we use here in the United States. I’ve seen that many at times. They really don’t, sometimes, understand what they need to put in their home. They don’t know the electricity of what they need. Sometimes, they don’t even know if they have enough electricity in their home to even run that unit.

This is the stuff that we do when we come out to the home, to look at. Getting into the tools, “Okay, what tools do I need?” There’s a lot of special tools you need to install this properly. We’re an HVAC company. We have these tools. They’re on the trucks. You need scales to weigh in refrigerant. You need a vacuum pump to remove the air from the system. You need gauges to charge the system. You need refrigerant to add to the system. You need electrical meters and things like that to hook up the power and check voltage. There’s a lot of special tools. You need torque wrenches to torque the flare nuts down and many other special tools.

These are all things that an average homeowner doesn’t have. Furthermore its actually dangerous for a homeowner to set up a system their self, the first thing is you’re working with high pressure, there’s high-pressure refrigerant. These refrigerant lines on the high side of the system can run up to 500 pounds of pressure. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a line blow off of something that has 500 pounds of pressure in it. It looks like a snake whipping all around as it explodes. You could do a possible flaring, make a flare to attach to the unit, and the flare isn’t good, it’s not on tight, it’s not made properly, the line can blow off the unit. I’ve heard of instances where people have been killed doing this, from the pressure in these lines.

The other thing is you’re drilling holes into your house. I’ve seen people, the do-it-yourselfer, drill a hole into their house, to put the lines into the house, and they don’t even know what’s in the wall. I’ve seen people drill in and hit a gas pipe. I’ve seen people drill and just some of the things that I’ve seen, I’ve witnessed it. I’ve seen holes in gas pipes. I’ve seen people take a drill and drill in with a drill and hit an electrical wire. I’ve seen people drill into a hole and hit a heating pipe, hit a water pipe. All kinds of things, because they just think, “Drill a hole through the house and put the wires in there.” You could do all kinds of damage to your house too.