Ducted Air Conditioning Sydney

Ducted suits a house where you want most rooms cooled and heated from one system, with nothing on the walls but a controller. It needs a ceiling cavity with the height and access for the indoor unit and the duct runs, which most detached Sydney homes with a pitched roof have. Terraces, flat roofs and apartments usually suit split systems better.

In Sydney, ducted is usually a retrofit into a ceiling that has been there for decades. That makes the roof space the first thing we look at, before we talk about capacity or brands. If you are still weighing it up, our guide to choosing between ducted or split system air conditioning sets out the trade-offs.

Between 1968 and 1979, some Sydney homes had loose-fill asbestos insulation blown into their ceilings. The NSW Government identified the council areas where it is more likely to turn up in homes built before 1980 and six of them are in Sydney: Hornsby, Ku-ring-gai, The Hills, Parramatta, North Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown. Wollongong is not one of them.

It matters more for ducted than for any other air conditioner. A ducted install means working through the whole cavity, lifting batts and cutting in outlets and a return air grille and then the system moves the house’s air through that space every day. NSW advice is plain: if loose-fill asbestos is suspected, do not enter or work in the ceiling.

It is also easy to miss. In April 2016 a 1950s home in Asquith tested positive during the NSW testing program and the loose fill was sitting under insulation batts added years later, so a normal look into the roof had not found it.

So for a pre-1980 home in those areas, search the address on the NSW loose-fill asbestos insulation register before the site visit. When we inspect the roof space we look under the batts, not just across them. If there is loose, fluffy fill underneath, nobody should work in that ceiling until a licensed asbestos assessor has checked it and that includes us. Most homes are clear and then the job goes ahead as normal.

In a strata townhouse or villa, the NSW Government lists installing a reverse-cycle air conditioner as a renovation that needs the owners corporation’s approval and ducting in a shared roof space may need a by-law as well. Across the Hills and Parramatta, where a lot of newer housing is strata, that approval is the first step. Our apartment air conditioning page covers how strata approval works.

The easiest time to put in ducted is before the plasterboard goes up. If you are planning a knock-down rebuild, an extension or a second storey, talk to us early and the ducting goes into a new ceiling instead of an old one. Builders can read how we work with them on our builders page.

Standby is based in the Illawarra and comes into Sydney on the M1 and the M5. We install ducted systems across Sydney metro, from the Sutherland Shire and St George to Canterbury-Bankstown, Parramatta, the Hills and the North Shore along the Pacific Highway. For split systems and single rooms, see air conditioning installation in Sydney. If you already have ducted and it has stopped working, see ducted air conditioning repair.

Standby is an NSW Government rebate installer. When an upgrade is eligible, the discount comes off the quote itself. Not every ducted system qualifies, so we check yours against the rules before we quote. The details are on our NSW air conditioning rebate page.