concealing outdoor air conditioner pipes

they made need to be insulated

Line set covers are 3 times thicker than a down spout.

y house. The wire/pipe bundles need to run on exterior of house. The spec ialized ducts to conceal these wire/pipe bundles are 3x as expensive as typ ical aluminum downspouts at HomeDepot. Has anyone had any luck with conce aling such pipes in typical aluminum downspout pipe? Do you split them ope n?? Any other ideas? All comments appreciated.

Not sure what you mean by that. I would think the line sets are already insulated and all he wants to do is run them inside a gutter down spout. A typical whole house AC only uses a 7/8" suction line and a 3/8" pressure line. Only the suction line is insulated and it's maybe 1/2" thick. Presumably the lines for a mini-split are even smaller. So, I don't see why they wouldn't fit inside a down spout.

Correct. Line set for mini split is roughly 2.5" dia after I bundled the whole thing (wires, pressure and return line with integral foam insulation, 1/2" drain line) together with PVC tape.

I think he means the covers are made of heavier material and offer better protection.

So, if it fits in a gutter downspout, then I would just go ahead and use that to hide it. It's cheap, typically found on the outside of houses, etc, so it should be at least as good as anything else.