My Airbnb is in trouble as the summer is coming. It needs more air conditioning, but the property doesn’t make enough income to justify the expense. Can I save my Airbnb by strapping on a toolbelt and DIYing a mini split system?
Follow along as I install a Senville 3 zone mini split system with the help of YouTube and the pressure of a deadline of my next mid-term rental guests moving into the unit in 8 days.
Resources
Once you find your first, or next, short term rental, you’ll want to start building your team. Check out this video on hiring your first team member - The First Hire for Your Short Term Rental Business
If you’re looking to find your first, or next short term rental, check out this video on how I found one that’s a little more profitable than the one in this video ;) How I Found a Profitable Airbnb Rental Property
Signing up to host on Airbnb? Get $40 by using my link: https://www.airbnb.com/r/pzula?s=6&t=061n1v
Transcript
I have eight days to save the cashflow for this Airbnb property for the next two years. Summer is coming and this Airbnb can get hot. Last year we had several weeks where the temperatures stayed up above 100 degrees for weeks on end, with very few temperature drops to cool off the house in the nighttime. Right now there’s only one air conditioning system in this whole house and it does an okay job of keeping the kitchen, the living room and the dining room at an okay temperature in that kind of heat.
But these bedrooms are where the sun hits most of the day. And there’s just no good way to get the cold air from that mini split over to this side of the house. The next set of Airbnb guests are checking in in eight days. They’re medical professionals and they work night shifts. So they’re going to be sleeping in these hot rooms during the day.
They’re going to be here for three months, all summer long. And that’s just a recipe for disaster in this hot house. If I do nothing about this, there’s a few different things that can play out. This great three month booking could decide to leave if it gets too hot, and a short departure like that would result in a disaster for a rental like this, that requires some lead time to get people booking these longer stays. Or if they decide to stay and it is a hot summer, they could end up leaving a bad review, creating problems for future guests, trusting that this is a good place for them to book. I’ve decided that I can’t opt to do nothing about this situation. The plan is to keep this property for the next several years, so we’ll have this issue again next summer.
I called a few air conditioning companies and I had them come out to take a look at the situation. Every single one of them recommended adding mini splits to each one of these bedrooms. Along with that, since we get extremes of both hot and cold in this climate. They recommended a hyper heat system.
With a multi-zone system like that, the quotes were coming in and around $13,000. And that’s not including the $500 to $700 electrical work that’s needed as well. However, these companies could get a project done in one day and then my problem would be solved. The issue is that this property does not make $13,000 a year in profit. Although it’s a fully furnished mid-term rental and is within a few miles of a good hospital system, it only makes around $6,000 a year in profit. Deciding to go with one of these companies would eat up the cash flow of this property for the next two years, essentially making all of my work and effort for the next two years free until the third year.
In the past few months, I’ve been getting ads for DIY mini split systems. I knew they existed, but I wasn’t sure what it would take. I started watching YouTube videos and many encouraged their viewers that it was achievable and most of them claimed that you could do it all in one day. I started pricing out the systems and thinking maybe it is possible, maybe I can have the mini split system, save this Airbnb for the summer and still save some of the cash flow.
I found a three zone unit with a big enough condenser, good reviews from the DIY community and the hyper heat capabilities that I needed. The systems were being sold for $2,600. I pulled the trigger and I bought the system. All I knew is that I had eight days and if this project was going to happen, I needed to have that system here on day one.
I still didn’t quite know what I was doing, but there was no turning back now. The mini split system was shipping on freight and I was committed because there was no way to return it. I started ordering the additional tools and supplies that these YouTube videos told me I would need. I still barely knew what I was doing and my costs were growing.
I was hoping that I wasn’t mixing up too many different methods from too many different tutorials. I was starting to get worried as I waited for my system to arrive. What was my worst case scenario? I started thinking, What if I had to pay for a service call to finish this project? Would I have a hard time finding an HVAC company who would take on a system that they didn’t even sell?
Would I end up having just the buy regular window units to get this place through the summer? I didn’t even know if you could resell one of these systems on Craigslist or Marketplace. Or would I do nothing if I failed? I found a two hour video while I waited for this unit to arrive. It was so detailed that I started to regain my confidence and believe that I could do it again, hopefully without a service call.
Thank you, AC Service Tech. The unit arrived a few days before the last guest checked out. A friend suggested that if I was going to make my own concrete pad instead of buying one, that I should start that soon. I spent $53 on gravel, concrete and a concrete mixing tub. The pre-made pads were $134, so I figured I was saving some money by making it myself.
I had some scrap wood that I used to make the form an old garden hoe and a shovel, and I got to work. Just that one piece saved me 81 bucks. I made the form and I got my concrete pad done. And then I waited a few days before setting the condenser. I knew from previous projects where I had learned how to do the project entirely on YouTube that claims that a project can be done in one day were often wrong.
So I figured a weekend would be good, and actually Memorial Day weekend would be awesome because I get three days and probably some help. The reality was that we were nowhere near done even in three days and I still needed help passed that third day. I chose a system that would allow for custom line lengths to be made so that you don’t end up with coils hanging out behind the AC condenser.
When you’re done with the system. The thing I didn’t realize was that by making this decision, I had to learn a pretty detailed skill of flaring line sets. I had to spend a lot of time redoing these flares whenever I got a small part of it wrong. By the fourth day of the project, I still only had two of the three line sets attached and none of the electrical work done with half of our timeline gone.
I was getting nervous. Finally, on day five, I got all the lines sets connected, but I was doubting whether I did a good enough job. There was only one way to find out whether or not the flares I had made were good enough, and that was to pressurize the system with nitrogen. This meant spending more money. I went to a local welding supply shop and bought a tank of compressed nitrogen and a nitrogen regulator.
I was going to have to pressure test the system to prove that it can hold the refrigerant. After a few hours of running tests and pressuring the system, I had felt confident enough that I had done everything that a service tech had taught me. In his video, it was time to release the refrigerant into the system. This was the point of no return.
And I had learned from other YouTubers that if a mistake was made in this critical step, it would be much more costly from this point forward. And I was trying to keep my costs down. But it was time. I released the refrigerant and we were on day six. There were only a few days left to hook up the electrical test the system, ensure it works and cover up the lines that before the next move in. The electrical went without any problems.
And finally it was time to fire it up. I used a laser infrared thermometer to prove that all of the units were cooling sufficiently, and after a half an hour test, I changed the system into heating mode and ensured that it could actually heat the house as well. I was happy to see that all three units were working with cold and hot air and no error codes were showing.
We had success! But was it successful? We had two days left to cover up the line sets. And how many hours had gone into this project? And I wanted to know, did we stay in the budget? With all the extra things I ended up needing in order to prove that the system worked and some things that I flat out didn’t know I needed until I was at that step.
Did I still manage to save my cash flow for the year? I sat down with my receipts and I wrote out everything. The grand total came out to $4,277.17. The DIY savings was $8,802.84. That was compared to what I was quoted by having the system installed by an HVAC company. That was awesome. But my friend pointed out that we worked a lot of hours once everything was done.
I calculated the total project hours between myself and my helper and included the time that I spent researching this project and buying materials and supplies and found that the total project time was 161 hours. If I were to pay myself and my helper out of this savings budget, then our hourly wage would be around $54 an hour. Although neither of us were paid in cold, hard cash,
The satisfaction of completing this project, providing a comfortable place for future guests and gaining new skills made it totally worth it. Not all DIY projects come with a cost savings and I’m well aware of that. Although this project took more than the one day that most YouTubers claimed, installing your own mini split system is doable and I think it’s an amazing way to add comfort and value to a property.
If you’re looking to find a profitable short term rental and you hope you’re not DIYing your way through making improvements, check out this next video where I show you the system I used step by step to find a property that’s a little bit more profitable than this one.