Air conditioning — installation & servicing
Air conditioning, installed and serviced before the hot weather finds the fault
Split and multi-split systems for homes, offices and small commercial spaces, and planned servicing for the ones already on the wall. We say exactly which parts of the job are ours and which are carried out under F-Gas certification by our refrigerant partner — because it is illegal to do it any other way, and anybody doing their job will ask.
Why it fails in the first hot week
An air conditioning unit that has sat quietly through the winter does not tell you anything is wrong with it until the first properly hot day, when everybody switches theirs on at once and every engineer in the south east is already booked. By then a loaded filter or a coil clogged with a year of dust has been quietly cutting its output, and a blocked condensate drain is about to start dripping down the wall.
Almost all of that is maintenance rather than repair. Clean filters, clean coils, a clear drain and a performance check in the spring are the difference between a system that copes with August and one that gives up on the first Friday of it.
What we do, and what our F-Gas partner does
Air conditioning is two kinds of work. One is mechanical: where the units go, how they are fixed, how the condensate gets away, whether air moves freely across the coils. The other is the sealed refrigerant circuit that does the actual cooling, and working on that circuit requires F-Gas certification by law. We coordinate the two so you have one point of contact and one handover — and we would rather you knew exactly who does what now than read it in the small print later.
Ours
Surveying the room and the route, positioning and fixing the indoor and outdoor units, condensate and drainage, filter and coil cleaning, and the airflow and performance checks on every visit.
Our F-Gas partner’s
Making and testing the refrigerant connections, recovery, charging and leak testing — carried out under their certification, with their paperwork handed to you.
Arranged with you
The electrical supply to the system, which goes on the quote as its own line, and any consent an outdoor unit needs from the council or the freeholder.
Every visit ends with a check, not just a clean
- Filters cleaned or replaced. A loaded filter is the commonest reason a unit runs flat out and still does not cool the room.
- Indoor and outdoor coils cleaned, because a coil furred with dust moves heat badly and makes the compressor work for it.
- Condensate and drainage cleared and tested with water, which is what stops the drip down the wall in July.
- Electrical connections visually checked for heat damage and security at the unit.
- Performance — air temperatures on and off the coil and the airflow across it, recorded so next year’s visit has something to compare against.
- Anything on the refrigerant side flagged and passed to our F-Gas partner, rather than topped up by somebody who is not allowed to.
How a new installation runs
A single split system is normally a day. The order does not change as it gets bigger.
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Survey
The room, what it needs cooling against, where the indoor unit can sit, where the outdoor unit can go and how the pipework and condensate get between them.
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Permission
An outdoor unit on a flat, a listed building or a conservation area can need consent. We tell you what to ask for before anything is ordered.
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Mechanical install
Units positioned and fixed, the route formed, and the condensate run to a fall so it drains without a pump wherever the building allows.
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Refrigerant and commissioning
Our F-Gas partner makes the refrigerant connections, pressure and leak tests them and commissions the circuit.
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Handover
How to use it, when the filters want cleaning, the paperwork for the refrigerant work, and a service date in the diary.
What you are handed
- A written record of the service and the performance readings
- The refrigerant paperwork from our F-Gas partner
- Anything found that needs attention, quoted rather than hidden
- The next service date, booked rather than left to memory
What it costs
Air conditioning is quoted rather than priced from a table: a single wall unit in a bedroom and a multi-split across an office floor have nothing in common except the name, and a figure that tried to cover both would be meaningless. Tell us what is there, how many units, and roughly where, and we come back with a price.
Where this sits next to the other services
Questions we get asked about air conditioning
No, and we say so rather than letting you assume it. F-Gas certification is held by our refrigerant partner, who carries out every piece of work on the refrigerant circuit — making the connections, recovery, charging and leak testing — under their own certification. Everything else on an air conditioning job, and everything in a routine service that does not open the circuit, needs no F-Gas certificate and we do it ourselves. You get one point of contact and the partner’s paperwork for their part of the work.
For most homes and small offices, once a year, in the spring, before the system is working hard. Somewhere with a lot of dust, grease or use — a kitchen, a gym, a server cupboard, a shop with the door open onto a main road — wants the filters looked at more often than that. The manufacturer’s own interval is the starting point, and the condition we find on the first visit tells us whether it needs shortening.
Almost always the condensate. An air conditioning unit takes water out of the air as it cools, and that water has to drain away through a pipe that falls continuously to somewhere it can go. When the drain is blocked with a year of dust and slime, or it was never given a proper fall, the tray overflows and it comes down the wall. Clearing and testing it is part of every service we do, and it is by far the commonest callout in the first hot week of the year.
Possibly, but that is not where to start. A loaded filter or a coil furred with dust will cut the output of a perfectly sound system, and both are cleaned in a normal service. If the air side is clean and the unit still is not performing, the refrigerant circuit is the next suspect — and a system that has lost refrigerant has a leak, which has to be found and repaired rather than simply topped up. That diagnosis and repair is F-Gas work and goes to our partner.
Sometimes. On a house it is often permitted development, subject to conditions about size, siting and noise; on a flat, a listed building or in a conservation area it is much more likely to need consent, and in a block the freeholder or managing agent usually has a say regardless. The council is the one to confirm it. We look at where the unit can go on the survey and tell you what to ask before anything is ordered.
Not sure where to start?
Send us a message with what you have noticed at home. We will tell you honestly whether you need a survey, a system, or neither.
Or see what it costs — unlike most in this trade, we publish our prices.
Trained on the systems we install
Certificated — and here they are
Most trade sites show you a row of logos. These are the actual certificates, both sat in August 2026. Tap either one to read it, or download the PDF.
- 12-month workmanship guarantee On top of the manufacturer’s warranty, which we register in your name. If anything we installed fails because of the way we installed it, we come back and put it right. What it covers.
- Company no. 12092552 Registered in England & Wales. Trading as Cavalli Ventilation since July 2019, and in ventilation since 2003.
- Airflow measured on every install A calibrated anemometer at the grille, recorded and handed over. The only figure that counts is the one measured in your room.