EG4 vs. Airspool: Which Solar Mini-Split Is Better?

Hey guys, Dave with Airspool here. Some of you have heard about solar air conditioning, or maybe you're considering getting a solar air conditioner this year, so we're making this video to compare and contrast the EG4 unit and the Airspool unit.

EG4 is our competitor, and they make a fine unit. How do we know they make a fine unit? Because it's basically the same unit, before we do what we're about to show you in the rest of this video. Theirs is usually less expensive than ours, and we're going to work to show you why ours may be cost-justified for you. By the end of this video, you'll have a good idea of the differences.

Some background: both units are made by a company called Deye, D-E-Y-E. We're two of the prominent distributors for Deye here in the US, and we tested other units before landing on Deye's platform — they weren't as good. Both of these are great units, so we're going to go step by step here, and by the end you'll be able to make your own decision.

Now we're looking at the backside of both indoor units. Here's EG4's unit, and here's ours — you'll notice ours has a cellophane wrap on it, which helps you get it through the hole in the wall more easily. We also have our valves offset to make that process easier, a subtle thing but it helps.

For the condensate drain, if you look closely you'll see it's got a slope. Water hates going uphill, so if you turn the unit over, the drain line is always going downhill, maybe an inch of slope, which is subtle, but we use zip ties to keep it running down, down, down. Where the line goes through the wall matters too: it needs to exit on the bottom, because if it loops around and water has to go uphill at any point, that will not work.

You've probably seen YouTube videos of self-installs or mini-split issues where units leak condensate out the front. Right now it's maybe 12% humidity today in May in Las Vegas, but in humid areas, or here in August, a lot of water comes out that tube. Hopefully it comes out the tube and not out of the front of your unit.

On the EG4 unit, to the best of our knowledge, this is their valve, and this condensate line isn't pre-installed. Not that you can't do it yourself, but if you get theirs, tape it up and make sure you follow the same principle: keep the slope going and route it out the bottom side, because that's what keeps the water flowing downhill.

Next is a more intricate part of the process than the condensate line: the communication control wire. These indoor units get power and signal from the outdoor unit. Ours is all pre-wired, and as we'll see in a second, everything is twist-to-connect. We've already connected this wire on the correct side, hopefully correctly, guaranteed, on the back side, which actually ends up being the front side of the unit. Todd is going to show us what's involved in installing this communication control wire onto the EG4 unit.

Todd: If you flip it over and zoom in here, you can see the little hole. This wire has to fish through that hole, through all those wires, then come out the other side so you can hook it up.

That little hole is back up inside there, so the wires come down and hook up one, two, three, four over here. Then this clamp has to go back on to hold the cable in place so it doesn't get pulled out. Then everything gets tucked back in and the cover goes on.

Everything is simple in theory, but you'll probably need a piece of electrical tape, because you need to fish this through, as Todd said, and there's no good way to do that without taping the wires together as you go. Then you need to know what you're doing for the wiring, and in a minute we'll show you the wiring diagram that EG4 provides in their installation manual. You don't need to know any of that for ours, because it's already pre-wired. Let's look at ours too, to show how it looks once installed.

This is already done for you. This part isn't rocket science, there are some subtleties to make it all work, but if you've got a career and you're making $25, even $50 an hour, your time is probably worth more than doing this yourself. If that's you, you're potentially a good candidate for what we're offering here. One more thing worth mentioning: something as simple as reversing the black and red wire will smoke the whole board on the EG4 unit.

It's important that whatever order you connect the wires on the indoor unit, you use the same order on the outdoor unit. We do them alphabetically: black, red, white, yellow. That's simple enough to remember, but come up with whatever method works for you, because you don't want to fry your board, and that will happen if it's done wrong.

Todd: That's correct.

Both indoor units are now on the wall. What's unique about our system is twist-to-connect. Once you get the hard part done, mounting the indoor unit on the wall, the rest takes about 5 minutes: twist to connect the valves, twist to connect the communication control wires, plug in the grid power. Out of that 5 minutes, about 4 minutes 10 seconds is these patent-pending valves. Our whole process here is patent pending, and we normally include a pair of gloves for this step.

The refrigerant is already in our line set. It's not in the EG4 line set. Instead, they pre-vacuum that line, and nature abhors a vacuum, so that works too. But if you need an extended line set, which we can also do, here's the difference: when you extend the line set out to 20 or 30 feet, if you just add more refrigerant at the compressor like they do on theirs, you can end up with the wrong charge. The charge, the amount of refrigerant in the system, is something we make sure is set up correctly, because both the unit and the line set carry refrigerant. Our fittings are also steel, so you don't get cross-threading problems, which is a potential issue with the EG4 ones.

This is where it starts getting tough, and this is where the gloves come in, about 4 minutes 10 seconds to do this, which is a lot easier than the process we're about to show you for the EG4. By the way, EG4's pre-vacuumed line set is still a huge improvement over having to run a vacuum pump and gauges yourself. With a vacuum pump and gauges, you're probably going to have to hire someone, or watch 20 YouTube videos, or call in a favor from your brother-in-law. If you haven't done this before, it's not something you want to learn on a one-off basis, either you're someone who's installed mini splits before, or you haven't. Don't make this your one and only install. Get ours, or get the EG4 unit.

You'll notice one fitting is male, one is female, and this isn't really a differentiator from EG4, because theirs works the same way, with a male and a female side so you can't connect it wrong. That's a good design insight either way. Both of ours also come with a dust cap, so that's kind of a wash between the two.

Now here's their line set. Notice how our line set is already mounted on our outdoor unit and connected — there are two identical pieces, so it doesn't matter which one you use. On the EG4 unit, you start the same way: thread it by hand as far as you can, without wrenches, so you're less likely to cross-thread it. I'll admit I haven't done one of these installs before, so this isn't me poking fun at EG4, I genuinely haven't done this. These fittings take two wrenches, and according to their manual...

Todd: Is that the right line you're connecting to?

Oh, that is a potential problem. On EG4's unit, they obviously also have one male and one female fitting, but here I was trying to attach the 3/8-inch line to the 1/4-inch fitting, which you could technically force. In fairness to me, I'm just not that good with this stuff, and that's exactly why we developed our system. Anything that takes real skilled-labor insight is where mistakes happen, and if there's any guessing to be done, I'm going to guess wrong. So, in fairness to EG4, that mistake was on me, not a flaw in their design, I had the 3/8-inch line. You'll probably need to cut a zip tie to make this easier, but it's working now, threading by hand. Now we've got some separation here.

Todd, do you have those two wrenches?

Todd: You know, I was running to Home Depot.

So the only tool you're going to need for our unit is... what do they call that? They call it a drill. The only tool you need for our unit is a drill. It's that simple. Meanwhile, whenever I try to do something myself, I'll have every single drill bit except the one I'm looking for, I'm not great at staying organized, so I always seem to lose the exact bit I need. That's why we give you the drill bits too, which we'll show you here for mounting the indoor unit on the wall. But if you don't have two wrenches for the EG4 install, you're going to have to make a Home Depot run, or borrow some, and that stops the momentum of your project, which you don't want.

So here we have two wrenches. Now I see a potential vulnerability: the line is hanging here while I adjust the wrenches, which isn't ideal, but it'll work.

The problem without a torque wrench is that I'll keep tightening past where I should. It's not done yet, but I just heard some of the vacuum releasing. You're supposed to tighten it to about the end, but not too much, because that can hurt the valve, and if you do it too little, there could be a leak. That's according to their manual, which is why I'd infer that one of your wrenches should really be a torque wrench. You have to do this on both fittings, no big deal, but that's two wrenches and four spots to tighten, versus a hand twist at two spots for our unit.

Here's an important note: on EG4's unit, you'll void the warranty if you disconnect and move it once it's installed. On ours, we've made videos showing how our units can be moved, they handle it just fine. You can disconnect and reconnect our valves all day long if that's your idea of a good time. Move it as many times as you want. Some people, for example, have a house in Florida and one in Delaware, with ours, you could take the unit off the wall in the winter and bring it down to Florida.

That said, it's somewhat of a balancing act, because the line set on either unit is made of copper, and copper can kink. You want to feel like you have a good, literal and figurative, handle on the process, if you're wrenching things around carelessly, the line set could potentially kink.

Now we're moving on to where the rubber meets the road. At this point, our line set is connected, and next we're going to connect the communication control wires. The same way we pre-wired the indoor unit, we also pre-wired these, so you don't have to deal with any of it.

I just connected the communication control wires, pretty easy, right? That was a lot easier than doing all the wiring after taking the plate off. So right now, on the Airspool unit, the line set is connected and the communication control wires are connected.

This is another big one, see this? This is the power cord. We not only provide it, we pre-install it. Picture yourself doing the Home Depot run because you're missing a wrench or a drill bit, and then you get to this stage and realize you don't have a power cord either. So you make another run, and then you have to figure out what gauge wire to use and strip the end yourself. On ours, it's already done, you don't have to worry about any of that.

Todd's going to take off the covers on the EG4 unit, to get access and get a wrench on there, you have to remove that. Not a big deal, and Todd is handy with a Phillips driver and an impact drill.

Here's what I call my rule of screwdrivers: whenever I'm looking for a Phillips, I've got five flatheads in my drawer, and whenever I'm looking for a flathead, I've got four Phillips. We provide you with a Phillips head, not a fancy one like Todd's, but a Phillips head, even though you won't need it for our unit. You do need it for the EG4 unit, since you'll have to remove this cover as well to wire it.

These are called MC4 connectors, and they're the same on both units, that's a wash between the two. It's pretty basic wiring, but if reading wiring diagrams isn't your thing, it can feel confusing. With our unit, you don't have to know anything about any of that, because everything's twist-to-connect, this part of the work is already done for you.

With the EG4 unit, you'll be looking at a wiring diagram: you connect your communication control wires one, two, and three, plus the L and N terminals, which is where your power cord connects once you make that trip to Home Depot.

You'll connect black, red, white, and then ground goes to the ground screw. By the way, we're also giving you a little instruction manual for how to do this on the EG4 unit. Your L and N terminals connect to your 120-volt power, since both units run on 120V, which is actually a bit of a rarity for 12K mini splits. There are quite a few 12K mini splits that run on 120V, but not all of them, and running a 240V circuit for a 12K unit is, in my opinion, more friction than it's worth. But both of these units run on 120V. Once that's done on the indoor unit, here's how the same connections look on the outdoor unit.

Back to the two wrenches for the outdoor unit, don't over-tighten or under-tighten. Over-tighten and you could hurt the valve; under-tighten and you could get a refrigerant leak, which is a big problem.

One of the biggest things you get with our unit is that, because we set it up and test it beforehand, you know there aren't going to be any refrigerant leaks. Both our unit and EG4's have direct-connect MC4 connectors, which is sort of the magic behind how these units work, the motors are DC motors, and solar power is DC, so it's a DC-to-DC connection through these MC4 connectors. What's different is we provide what we call whips: similar to an AC whip, these are DC whips, and they come pre-connected and pre-installed on the MC4 connectors on our unit.

This is the isolator switch, basically an on-off switch. You keep it in the on position as long as the unit is running, but if you're doing maintenance, or for any reason want to turn the solar power off, this is how you do it. It also supposedly helps protect against lightning strikes and similar issues, but otherwise, keep it in the on position.

We provide you with these whips and this isolator switch. EG4 may offer something similar, I couldn't say whether theirs is better or worse, but don't quote me, I want to say theirs runs around $75. The functionality should be pretty similar. This part costs something, and you could research and source it yourself, but it costs us less to buy it in bulk than it would cost you to buy it individually, and it's included in our kit.

We also give you 10 meters, about 33 feet, of solar wire. The only thing we don't provide with the unit is the solar panels themselves. Solar panels are offered on our website, they may or may not be the right fit for you, and if not, we'll refer you to another place to get them. Either way, you're definitely going to need solar wire, and that's all provided in our kit.

Here are some other things included in our kit. There's a step-by-step manual with photos, and if photos aren't your thing, when you get a unit from us you also get a link to a series of YouTube videos in order, a visual instruction manual you can watch. So there are two ways to make sure everything goes correctly. This manual is exclusive to us, it's not a modified Chinese manual, it's a native English manual, which we're proud of.

We also made a video just about this drill bit, called Does It Drill? We're proud of that one, it's got maybe 65 or 70 views so far, but it's a good watch, and this drill bit will go through just about anything, as you'll see in that video. When we first started playing around with this, we were using the spider bits from Lowe's and Home Depot, which run about $27 or $28 now and aren't as good as this one.

Everything costs money, this drill bit doesn't cost us $27 or $28, because we're able to get all this stuff at a discount, and since these are all things you're going to need anyway, we include them in the kit to make your life easier. That way you don't have to go to Home Depot, and you avoid the transaction cost of having to make another trip. If you don't already have a hole saw, that's going to be one of the first things you realize you're missing. If you already have a lot of tools, you're probably fine, but this hole saw will get through more than 95 percent of what you need. In fairness to EG4, a hole saw like this is included in their kit too.

There's a level, too, not an $80 level, but effective. You put it on the leg of the mounting plate for the indoor unit, which we hadn't talked about yet, and you can tell when it's level. That way you don't have to go hunting for your own level, when's the last time you used one, yesterday, a year ago, five years ago? Or maybe you don't own one, but now you have one.

There's insulation that wraps around where the two valves connect on the refrigerant lines, you don't want condensate dripping anywhere, so we include this to insulate everything, plus zip ties to secure it. There's a Phillips bit, so you don't have to hunt for your own Phillips bit or screwdriver, it fits right into your drill. We also include a masonry bit and a regular drywall bit, mostly for mounting the plates and drilling for the wall anchors, sized to match. None of these individually cost a lot of money, but everything adds up, and it's one less thing to deal with. This kit is essentially everything you're going to need to install the Airspool mini split. Here are the gloves we mentioned earlier, and this tape also helps wrap around the insulation.

So what's the punchline here? Because we pre-install and pre-test this unit, we're able to give you a 5-year guarantee, because we know it's going to work for you. Any out-of-the-box defects, we sort those out before the unit ever gets to you. Say 3 to 5 percent of units have some kind of defect, maybe more, maybe less, you don't want to go through the whole install process and then win the reverse lottery with a unit that doesn't work. Ours is guaranteed to work, because we've already run it on solar, on grid, and on both, and tested everything, so we have very good assurance you're going to get great results.

That's really the bottom line: we pre-run every unit, and we give you the parts and tools we know for sure are going to work, which sets you up for success. With those two things combined, we're able to offer the 5-year guarantee, for whatever that's worth to you, it's our way of making sure your unit is going to run for the next 5 years. Look at our price, look at their price, and figure out for yourself whether the value is there, and whether our unit is worth it for you. Thanks so much for your time.