The Cost of Installing a Ductless Heating & Cooling System vs Buying Online (Video)

Mike Cappuccio outlines why the total cost of installing a Ductless Heating & Cooling system is more than simply the cost of buying the unit online, and why hiring a professional installer is worth the money.

Welcome. My name is Mike Cappuccio. I’m with N.E.T.R., Inc. Heating and Cooling Systems. I’m here today to educate you on why a ductless system is $4500 installed in your home, when the homeowner says to us, “Yes, I can buy the unit online for $1500, why is it $4500 to install in my home?” I’m here today to break down why it’s $4500 installed in your home. Let’s take a quick look. Unit costs $1500. You buy it online for $1500, I buy it for $1500. We both pay the same price, unfortunately, we do. Okay.

Next thing is you need accessories to put the system together, from the condenser on the outside to the indoor unit on the inside. You’ve got to put two things together. They need to get together with accessories — piping, line hide, whips, pads, stands, disconnects. Whatever else you need to put that together, you’re going to need that. You’re also going to need a professional to tell you what accessories you need to put that together.

Third, you’re going to need manpower to put this together. You are going to need labor. Our cost to put two guys out on a job at your house for a day to install this costs us, as a company, $680. The next thing you’re going to need to do this job is you’re going to need an electrician. Electricians run the power from your power panel in your house to the outdoor condenser that’s going to sit on the outside of the home. That is, 9 times out of 10, done by a licensed electrician. Most air conditioning contractors cannot do that work. It has to be done by a licensed electrician.

Permits. You’re going to need permits to do this job. At least we do as a company. We have to pay that cost. It’s $100. Next thing we have to pay to the state is we’ve got to pay sales tax on the entire job. That’s $300. Next thing we need to do is we need to come out to your home. Engineering and commission. What does that mean? Okay, Engineering and commission, that’s the comfort consultant that comes out to your home. I’m sorry to tell you but everyone thinks “free estimate”. Well, really it’s not a free estimate. Us, as a company, it costs us money to send comfort consultants out to your home in their truck or their car or whatever they go to your home in. There is a cost associated with that.

They need to come out to your home. They need to make sure that the unit is the right size for your home. They’ve done a load calculation. They look at the insulation, they look at the windows. They look at everything in the home to determine that we bought the right piece of equipment for the home. By the way, he, 9 times out of 10, gets paid on commission. He needs to make a commission for what he does to do the proper things for you as a homeowner, here, to make sure that you have the right piece of equipment installed in your home.

Next, as a business, we have overhead costs. A lot of people ask me, “Mike, what’s included in overhead costs?”

Okay, I don’t know if anyone owns a business or runs a business. You know you have insurance. You have liability insurance. Workman’s comp insurance. You have truck insurance. You have telephones. You have warehouse people. You have a building. You have a phone system. Whatever is involved in that, there are a lot of things that come into play with our overhead costs that we need to add to the cost of the job. That goes into the pricing of the job. Last but not least, we need to make a profit. Our profit is $400 on this whole entire piece of equipment. It’s 10%. If we don’t make a profit, we can’t stay in business. That’s why the equipment price is $4530 installed for a basic system installed in your home. You break it all down, it’s really not that bad. This is everything that’s included in it. Yes, “could I buy it online?” Absolutely you could.

There is going to be a few things that are going to come in play with this if you do buy it online. You’re still going to need the unit. You’re still going to need the accessories. You need a professional to tell you what accessories you’re going to need. 9 times out of 10, this is going to come on a common carrier to your house. You better make sure that when someone’s there that day to receive it off the truck, that they can lift 200 or 300 pounds off the back of a 48-foot tractor trailer and get it into your garage. You’re still going to need labor to install it in your home. Okay, does the labor have insurance? Do they have workman’s comp? Do they have liability? Do they have truck insurance? If something happens at your home at that point in time, it’s going to be your responsibility. Okay, you can do that, yes, I guess you can.

You’re still going to need an electrician. Well, if you pull the permits, you pull the permits. Okay, you’re going to eliminate the tax. Engineering and Commission — okay, did I buy the right unit for my home? If you spent all this money, you better make sure that you bought the right unit for your home. All right, you can take out the overhead. You can take out the profit. Maybe you can get it down to $3800 or $4000, whatever you are going to get it down to at that point, but in reality, you have no warranty on this. No warranty at all. You’ve just spent almost $4000 and if something goes wrong here, you have one thing you can hope on — that you can find the installer that put it in from the internet for you to come back and fix it for you. If you want to do that, that’s fine.

I highly recommend getting it installed by N.E.T.R., Inc. Heating and Cooling Systems. Diamond-elite contractor, North Andover, Massachusetts. We’re going to be there for you. We’ve always been here and we’re going to continue being here for you.

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