When an air conditioner stops cooling in Randwick, the cause is usually one of about eight things. What is unusual here is the range of buildings we see in a single week: a Federation house with high ceilings, a consulting suite that has to stay silent, a 1970s walk-up flat, and a student share house that has never had a filter washed.

Federation homes, high ceilings and tall windows

A lot of Randwick is Federation and interwar housing, and those houses behave differently from anything built after them. Ceilings run three metres or higher, windows are tall, walls are solid brick with no cavity insulation, and the roof void is generous.

The tall ceilings matter more than owners expect. A room with a 3.3 metre ceiling has roughly a third more air volume than the same floor area at 2.4 metres, and warm air collects above head height where nobody benefits from conditioning it. Sizing off floor area alone understates the load, and a wall mounted head unit high on the wall often ends up conditioning the top of the room.

So we calculate off volume, glazing, orientation and construction, and we think about where the air is delivered as much as how much there is. In these houses ducted air conditioning usually wins, because ceiling outlets can be positioned to push conditioned air down into the occupied zone and the return can be taken from the right place. The roof void is normally there to do it properly.

Medical, dental and consulting suites

The hospital and university precinct brings a large amount of medical and allied health tenancy work: specialist rooms, dental surgeries, physiotherapy, pathology and administrative space. Those have requirements an ordinary office does not.

Quiet operation is the first. A noisy fan in a consulting room is intrusive during an examination or a difficult conversation. The second, and the one that gets missed at design stage, is crosstalk. A shared ducted system with a straight duct run between two consulting rooms will carry conversation from one to the other, and in a medical setting that is a privacy problem rather than an annoyance.

We address it with equipment selection, duct routing, acoustic lining and crosstalk attenuators where the layout requires them. Waiting rooms need capacity for a full room rather than an average one, and some clinical and storage areas need stable conditions rather than simple comfort cooling. Our in house mechanical engineers produce the design work where a fitout needs drawings.

What we check when an air conditioner stops cooling

Our air con technicians run the same sequence every time. Measured airflow across the indoor coil, refrigerant pressures and superheat, electrical draw on the compressor and fan motors, condensate drainage, and the control signal between head unit and outdoor unit. About an hour on a split, longer on ducted.

What we do not do is top up gas and leave. Refrigerant does not get used up. If a reverse cycle air conditioner is low on charge there is a leak, and topping it up without finding that leak is money you spend again next summer.

Faults we see most often in this part of Sydney

• Systems sized on floor area in high ceilinged period homes, which leaves them short on a hot afternoon.
• Warm air stratifying above head height in rooms with tall ceilings, so the occupied zone never feels the benefit.
• Noise complaints in consulting suites that turn out to be fan speed or poor isolation rather than a fault.
• Crosstalk between consulting rooms through shared ductwork, which is a design issue arriving as a complaint.
• Condensers crowded into light wells in walk-up flats, recirculating discharge and tripping on high pressure.
• Filters that have never been washed in student rentals, costing a large share of the cooling.
• Failed capacitors and contactors on units past eight years, usually why a system hums but will not start.

We carry common parts on the van, so most air conditioning repairs in Randwick are finished on the first visit. Where a part has to be ordered, you get the price and the lead time before we leave.

Heritage, conservation areas and outdoor unit placement

Parts of Randwick sit in conservation areas and many individual houses are worth protecting whether or not they are listed. That generally rules out a condenser visible from the street or anything fixed to an original elevation.

In practice the outdoor unit goes down the side, in a rear yard, or behind a parapet or screen where it cannot be seen from the footpath. Indoors we favour concealed ducted equipment over wall units in rooms with ornate ceilings and cornices, because a box on the wall of a Federation front room is a compromise nobody enjoys looking at. We keep installations reversible and write up the detail an approval needs.

Apartments, flats and strata

There is a lot of apartment stock here, from 1960s and 70s walk-ups to newer blocks along the light rail corridor. Work in them needs written strata approval before any penetration of common property, plus the installer's licence and certificate of currency, and usually a nominated condenser position.

We handle that and work to approved access hours. In older blocks there is often no documented position, so it has to be agreed, and we put the clearance and noise reasoning in writing because that is what gets an approval through a committee. Where outdoor space is scarce a multi head split system reduces the number of condensers competing in a light well, and for newer Class 2 buildings we do rectification work where the base build system was never commissioned properly.

Student and hospital rentals

A large share of local housing is rented to students, hospital staff and visiting families, with high turnover. Nobody washes a filter in a place they are living in for six months, and an owner who lives elsewhere finds out when a tenant complains in January.

For owners and agents with several properties here, a scheduled annual air conditioning service in spring costs less than the emergency call outs it prevents, and gives you a written condition report for each property. Between tenancies is the ideal time, because access is easy and nothing is urgent.

Repair, or replace the air conditioning unit

The honest answer depends on three numbers.

Age. Most residential air conditioning units run 10 to 15 years in Sydney conditions. Past 12, a major component failure is rarely worth chasing.

Repair cost against replacement. Once a quote passes roughly half the cost of a new air conditioning system, replacement usually wins on a five year view, because an inverter unit uses noticeably less power than a fixed speed unit from 2012.

Refrigerant type. Systems running R22 cannot be legally recharged with that gas any more, so an R22 unit with a leak is a replacement whichever way you look at it.

With ducted there is a fourth question. Often the ductwork and grilles are still serviceable and only the fan coil and condenser need replacing, which is a far smaller job than owners assume. We will tell you when that is the case.

Shops, cafes and businesses along Belmore Road

The commercial strip here trades alongside the hospital and university traffic, with cafes, food outlets, pharmacies and clinics. A cafe needs make up air matched to its canopy or the room goes negative and the door becomes hard work. A shop with an open frontage needs an air curtain and capacity sized for that opening rather than the floor area.

We do commercial air conditioning installation, commercial repairs and planned maintenance, including ventilation and kitchen exhaust to code, with works scheduled outside trading hours.

Service and maintenance that stops the call out happening

Most emergency air con repairs we attend were avoidable. A yearly service costs a fraction of a compressor, and in a clinic or a consulting suite a failure costs a day of appointments rather than just a repair bill.

A proper service means cleaning filters, chemically cleaning coils where needed, clearing and treating the condensate drain, checking refrigerant charge against design, testing electrical connections and current draw, and verifying the system holds setpoint under load. In consulting suites we also check fan speeds and isolation, because noise creep is the complaint we get most often there and it is usually a maintenance item. Commercial sites get a written condition report for each air conditioning unit.

Why Randwick customers keep calling us back

• We turn up when we say we will. A time window and a call before arrival, not a vague morning booking that eats your day.
• Fixed quotes, no hidden fees. The price we quote is the price you pay, with flexible payment options on larger installations.
• Licensed, insured and accredited. ARC authorised, accredited with FPA Australia and Engineers Australia.
• Lifetime workmanship guarantee. We stand behind the install, not just the warranty on the box.
• 24/7 availability. Air conditioners fail on long weekends and in heatwaves. We answer the phone then too.

It is why a lot of our Randwick work comes from practice managers, strata committees and repeat customers rather than advertising. See the standard of it in our projects.

Systems and brands we work with

• Ducted air conditioning. Concealed in the ceiling, zoned, only grilles visible. Usually the right answer in a Federation home.
• Multi split systems. Up to five indoor heads on one condenser, independent control in each room.
• Split systems. One indoor head, one outdoor unit. Best value for a single room or a granny flat.
• Cassette units. Ceiling mounted, four way discharge, the usual answer in a clinic or retail fitout.
• VRV and VRF. For larger buildings needing simultaneous heating and cooling across many rooms or tenancies.
• Ventilation and exhaust. Kitchen exhaust, make up air, carpark and bathroom ventilation to code.

We supply and service Daikin air conditioners along with Mitsubishi Electric, Fujitsu, Samsung, ActronAir and Panasonic, and repair all makes and models including units we did not install. In a consulting suite sound rating decides the selection before anything else does.

Questions we get asked in Randwick

My high ceilings make the house hard to cool. What helps?
Sizing off volume rather than floor area, and getting the air delivered down into the occupied zone instead of into the top of the room. Ceiling outlets on a ducted system do that far better than a wall unit mounted high.

Can conversation carry between consulting rooms?
Yes, through shared ductwork, and it is more common than people realise. It is solved with duct routing, acoustic lining and attenuators. Raise it before the ceiling goes in rather than after.

Can I put a condenser at the front of a Federation house?
Generally not, and you would not want to. It goes down the side, at the rear or behind a screen where it is not visible from the street. We work out a compliant position first.

I own rentals near the hospital. When should they be serviced?
Spring, every year, and ideally between tenancies when access is easy. It is the cheapest way to avoid an emergency call out in January.

Book an air conditioning technician in Randwick

Call Epic Air Group on 02 9898 9779 or request a quote online. Tell us the make and model and what the unit is doing, so we send the right technician with the right parts first time.

Fitting out consulting rooms or renovating a period home? Send the plans early. Acoustics, concealment and load are all cheap to solve at design stage and expensive to correct afterwards.

We cover Randwick and the eastern suburbs, including Coogee, Kingsford and Kensington. See every suburb on our areas we serve page.