Do you feel like the number of invisible footguns was manageable? That's always my concern with diy trades stuff, the things that seem fine at install but come back to bite you 6mo later.
In general with contractors, you aren't paying for them to do the simple stuff right. You're paying them to get the one or two weird bits of the job done quickly and efficiently because they've seen something like it before and have the tools and parts on their truck.
That is why I didn't try to DIY. Sure I'm confident I could get it installed. However I'm sure that I would discover after the old furnace was tore out that I'm missing some part/tool and so off to the store - what would take a pro a single day would take me 3 weekends at best: time that I don't have HVAC.
There's a bunch of DIY heat pump install videos on YouTube, I watched this one recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79C2StyNlBg Honestly it convinced me that it's beyond my skillset.
No invisible footguns, just a bit of anxiety releasing refrigerant and hoping my lineset connections don't leak. Theres only a preset amount of refrigerant, it dissipates into the air and theres no easy way to refill it.
That said, some will inevitably leak out (ie. while disconnecting manifold gauge set) but no big deal. I've done four installs and nothing catastrophic.
