People are usually braced for something worse than it is. Air conditioning is not a fitted kitchen and it is not a week of your life. Most home installations are done inside a day. Here is what really happens, how long each stage takes, and what pushes a job longer.
In this guide
The short answer
A straightforward single room installation is usually a one day job, often less. A multi room system is typically one to two days depending on how many rooms and how the pipework runs. Bigger jobs take longer, and we tell you which one yours is when we quote, not when we arrive.
That is deliberately in days rather than hours. An installer who promises three hours on the phone is telling you about their schedule, not your house. The time is decided by the route the pipework takes, and nobody knows that until they have looked.
What actually happens on the day
It helps to know the shape of the day, because most of it is quieter than people imagine. The order varies. The work does not.
- Protecting the space. Dust sheets down, furniture covered, a route in and out agreed. Ten minutes that saves an argument.
- Marking out. Confirming with you exactly where the units and the pipe run are going, before anything is drilled. Your last easy chance to change your mind, and worth using.
- Fitting the indoor unit. The bracket goes up, level, and the core hole through the wall is drilled for the pipework and the drain.
- Siting the outdoor unit. On brackets or on feet, level, with clearance around it so it can breathe.
- Pipework, cabling and drainage. The longest part of the day, and what decides whether the job looks tidy in five years.
- Vacuum and pressure testing. The system is evacuated and checked for leaks before any refrigerant goes near it. This takes real time and cannot be rushed.
- Commissioning. The system is started, checked, and verified against the design.
- Making good and cleaning up. Trunking, sealing, and taking our mess away with us.
- Handover. Showing you how to use it properly, which matters more than people expect.
The testing stage is the one worth understanding. Pulling a vacuum on the pipework and holding it to prove there are no leaks is not optional and not quick. A system charged without it may work on the day and be flat in two years. It is also the stage a rushed job cuts, because it is the one you cannot see.
A single room install
One indoor unit, one outdoor unit, a short pipe run. This is the bread and butter of what we do, in bedrooms, lounges and home offices all over Teesside.
Typically a single day, and frequently we are finished well before the end of it. The best case is a room where the outdoor unit goes on the wall directly outside, so the pipework barely travels. A bungalow, or a ground floor room with a straightforward external wall, is about as quick as this work gets.
What stretches it is distance. A first floor bedroom at the front, with the outdoor unit round the back, means a long run and a route to work out. Same system, considerably more of the day.
A multi room install
Several indoor units running off one outdoor unit. It is the most popular thing we fit, because it is far better value per room than doing the rooms one at a time.
Two rooms is often a long day. Three or more usually means two days, sometimes more, and that is about pipework rather than the units. Every indoor unit needs its own run back to the outdoor unit, and the awkward part is finding a route for several of them that is tidy and does not carve up your house.
Where a job runs over two days, we plan it so you are not left in the middle of something overnight. The house is habitable at the end of each day and we clear up properly.
What slows a job down
None of these are problems exactly. They are time, and they are why a survey exists. If any apply to you, we would rather price the day honestly than turn up and discover it.
- Long pipe runs. The single biggest factor. Distance is time, whatever the building.
- Solid walls and awkward construction. Older Middlesbrough and Thornaby housing is often solid wall, and a core hole through that takes longer than through a modern cavity.
- A difficult route. Pipework that has to cross a hall, drop through a floor void or climb an outside wall people will look at takes planning and care.
- Access to the outdoor unit position. A first floor elevation over a conservatory roof, or a wall reachable only across a neighbour’s land, changes the day entirely.
- Electrical work. Most installations need no new dedicated circuit. Where one is needed, that is more time, and it should already be in the quote.
- Weather. Working at height on an outdoor unit in a Teesside gale is not something anybody should do to hit a deadline.
- Decisions made on the day. Changing where the unit goes at nine in the morning is fine, and we would rather you were happy. It does move the finish line.
The Teesside terrace problem
There is a specific version of this that comes up constantly in the older terraced stock around Middlesbrough, Thornaby and parts of Stockton. Solid walls, a small yard, a wall on either side, and the room you want cooling is upstairs at the front.
The outdoor unit has to go in the yard or on the back wall. The room is at the other end of the house. So the pipework has a journey, and there is no ugly way to do it that we are willing to sign our name to. That is a slower day than the same job in a bungalow in Marton, and pretending otherwise on a quote just means a rushed job. It is entirely doable. It is not a three hour visit.
The bit that happens before we arrive
Installation day is short partly because the thinking has already been done. The survey is where the route is worked out, the positions agreed, the sizing calculated and the awkward bits found.
The gap between accepting a quote and the work happening is mostly equipment lead time and where you sit in the diary. That is the part that stretches in summer. The first genuinely hot week of the year, every installer in Teesside gets the same calls in the same forty eight hours.
Mess, and what to expect
Less than you fear. It is drilling, not demolition.
There is one core hole through the external wall for each indoor unit. It is a proper hole, it makes dust, and it is the noisiest ten minutes of the day. Beyond that it is brackets, pipework and trunking. We sheet up, drill on a vacuum where we can, and take our rubbish with us.
What we cannot do is put paint back. If a pipe run crosses a wall you decorated last year, the trunking will be neat and it will still be trunking. Better to show you where it goes before we drill than surprise you afterwards, which is why marking out is part of the process.
Why a fast job is not always a good sign
It is tempting to read speed as competence. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is corners.
The stages skipped when someone is fitting three jobs into a day are always the same ones, because they are the ones you would never notice. A short vacuum instead of a proper one. Pressure testing waved through. Commissioning reduced to feeling that the air is cold. Handover reduced to leaving the remote on the side.
None of that shows up on the day. All of it shows up later, as a system slowly losing refrigerant and costing you more than it should. If a quote is much cheaper and the job much faster, those two facts are usually the same fact.
Booking a date that suits you
We tell you at quote stage how long your job will take, and if we get that wrong it is our problem rather than yours. We are F-Gas and Refcom registered, we guarantee our workmanship, and the person who surveys your house is from the same local team that fits it.
Autumn and winter are our quietest months, which makes them the best time to book. You choose the day rather than joining a queue in the middle of a heatwave, and the system is ready before you need it. We are based on North Ormsby Road in Middlesbrough and cover roughly twenty miles around it, including Stockton on Tees, Thornaby, Billingham, Norton, Yarm, Eaglescliffe, Ingleby Barwick, Redcar, Marske, Saltburn, Guisborough, Marton, Hartlepool, Peterlee and Darlington. The survey is free. Call 01642 680 873.
