Every few years, a product hits the market, and you can only say “finally” with equal amounts of relief and excitement. quilt Is it for me this year? Mini-splits are famously huge and heavy, look like plastic, and are an eyesore (and impossible to hide, especially in an old-style home!). The quilt not only warms and cools better, but it can be hidden in your room, not taking away from the overall design. Hallelujah. Form meets function, friends. As someone who was about to have a bunch of ugly mini splits in our 1850s guest cottage, I was lamenting how bad they would look against all our beautiful old beadboard. Then I came across my friend Brady’s partnership which seemed like a very attractive and simple option. I reached out, did the research, and am thrilled to be part of the solution to replacing ugly mini-splits with this new genius invention that’s actually charming.. Even if you have no intention of needing an all-in-one heat and AC unit, keep reading to see what good product design looks like. It’s like the Apple of home tech (and works extremely intuitively). Let’s break it down.
Wait, what’s a mini split?
This is a standalone heat and air conditioning unit that you can choose in rooms where you don’t want to remodel or install entire HVAC ducting (which is very expensive and laborious). Instead of being on the inside of a wall, it is essentially hung inside the room you need to heat/cool, with a portal to an external heat pump just outside it (so it must be an external wall). Whether you choose it for outbuildings (like our gym), or if you’ve built some additions and don’t want to hook up to your HVAC, it’ll work on its own. The quilt unit can heat or cool up to 480 square feet of space. The outside unit is a heat pump, which basically moves the temperature from inside to outside. This means you get localized control (like in a hotel room) without the inefficiencies of window AC units and the inconvenience of space heaters.
Why is quilt better than others?
Not that I’ve tried everything on the market, but we had a bad thing here that never worked, and boy was it ugly (it may have been our former contractor’s fault – not my brother, by the way). The gym was extremely cold in the winter (we had a small heater) and if you worked out after 11am in the summer it was like a sauna. problem solved. But more importantly, it is the most efficient mini split on the market with an industry-leading SEER2 of 25, HSPF2 of 12, Energy Star certification and. their auto-away facility (Again, this is a 2-zone heat pump, which is more energy efficient than a typical heating and cooling machine). We used a heat pump throughout our house for this reason. When it comes to stability, my philosophy is not to replace something that works fine with something that works better, but if you’re in the market for a new one or if like us, yours has broken, you should definitely find the thing that works best (regardless of whether it’s within your budget).
So, why is the design so great?
Yes, it works great, but what caught my attention is that you can customize the front to any color and almost any finish. So that means you can put wallpaper on it, you can even panel it with beadboard or wood! It comes with a white or white oak front (if you’re customizing, white will be what you want).
The unit itself is also so compact, unlike other bulky mini-splits. It is only 7 7/8 inches long; Many others are putting their feet forward! You remove the front panel (so easy, I’ve done it myself), then wallpaper or paint it the color of your walls to make it disappear.
We obviously chose white to blend in here, and in our guest cottage, we’ll be putting whatever paneling we have on the front in each room. This is honestly game changing, especially for those of us who have an older home that would be significantly compromised design wise if we had to use the bulky old type mini split.
Is it difficult to install?
we hired Greensavers In Portland (shout out to them – they did an incredible job, in and out in 4 hours!!). Hanging it on the inside wall is pretty easy (it just goes on these cleats), but the wiring on the outside is what you’ll need some experience with (or, again, hire one for). Here’s the breakdown, really quick:
- There must be clearance around the outdoor unit (for access to air as well as according to local codes).
- You will need an electrician to do electrical work.
- You have to make sure that you have enough power at the source and that you can connect easily. If this seems like a hurdle, know that many companies like Greensavers will handle the entire job, so you don’t have to think about it (again, took 4 hours for us – so fast).
- Installation fees vary across locations; However, the quilting industry is consistent.
- The hole in the back of the unit is quite small (about 3″), so you don’t have to worry too much about your framing, but you will have to make sure you have something to anchor it to (a stud).
how do you use it?? Is it easy??
One of my first questions to the Quilt team was “How smart is this, because I love it.” Little Smart but not that smart”. I don’t want something that has so many bells and whistles that I can’t figure out how to turn it on and off, and should it ever need repair, no one else can either. It’s my personal opinion that we are making our things in our house more technical than necessary (TV in front of the fridge, anyone?), which honestly makes them more susceptible to problems and causes so much frustration. (at least for me). is a quilt extremely Simple and easy.
- This wall-hung thermostat (“dial”) is both And an app. If I forget my phone at home, I use wall dial. If I’m on Peloton and I want to cool it down or turn off the heat, I use my phone app. so easy.
- You can set it to a specific temperature and it will never need to be changed. Another one is done.
- You can schedule it to turn on and off at certain times – like we set it to heat up to 65 degrees for Monday-Friday at 5am (but not all night) and then turn off at 11pm. In the summer, we both workout in the morning (and love having the doors open), but if we want to use it in the middle of a hot day, it will cool the entire room from 90 degrees to 75 degrees in 75 minutes (room size TBD).
- You can have multiple rooms on the same app, you just have to label them differently. extremely easy.
- There’s a very useful (and money-saving) feature called “Auto-Away” that can detect when people are not in the room and turn the device off for you. They tested it in a 3-bedroom home, and they cut their energy usage by 44%!
- I also love that the wall dial plugs in, so I don’t have to worry about changing batteries!!! It’s a smooth white cord (so obviously install it near an outlet).
I’m famously tech-averse and was able to download the app and figure it out on my own (I had the Greensavers expert standing next to me, hahaha, but I didn’t need that :)) but if you have an installer make sure you’re all set on your app before they leave so you don’t have to think about it.
Is this so “new” that we should worry about resolving “bugs”?
It’s happened to many of us – a new product launches, but then an improved version comes out the next year (as was the case with our Soke Pools – integrated pool cover now! and our Cold Plunge integrated cooling unit now!). That’s fine if it’s easy to replace or upgrade (or in those cases it’s fine if it works as is), but for anything renewal-based, I don’t want a beta model that may still have technical bugs (okay if the design gets even better – that’s just innovation!). So I asked Greensavers this explicitly before committing (they are not the inventors of the product, only installers, and they use all brands). He assured me that the unit has a classic heat pump mechanism that has been perfected for years and years – that is, they have not invented a new one. Type In the case of heat and AC, they’ve redesigned what already works efficiently (in both the sleeker design and simpler apps/dials) to make it better for the consumer. But what’s even better is that they have what are called “over-the-air” updates. This means that as their technology evolves, you can update your existing mini-split without having to buy a new one! I think this is using technology in the best possible way because you don’t have to replace an old unit that will likely end up in a landfill, but instead you have to improve the unit you originally purchased. Please tell us more about it!
I’m super excited that there is now a product to solve all of our massive mini split problems. i wanted to try quilt First here with just one unit to make sure it works really well before committing to multiple units in our vintage guest house renovation. But knowing that I can get efficient (and powerful) heat and AC in a house that won’t make our beautiful beadboard disappear and ruin the look of the old room is a real gift. Of course, now I want one in the garage instead of our stupid Cadet heater, but unless Quilt makes a time machine, I think I’ll stick with it for a while.
This post is actually sponsored quiltA partner that I look up to and am very happy to be a part of its success.
*by photos Caitlin Green
