Almost every piece of aircon advice written in Singapore is written for a flat. The rules quoted are HDB rules, the sizing examples are HDB rooms, and the assumption underneath is that one system cools the whole home.
A landed house breaks all three assumptions. It is not simply a bigger version of the same job — the decisions arrive in a different order, and two of them are made months before anyone talks about brands.
How many systems, not which system
In a flat the question is System 3 or System 4. In a landed house that question does not really apply, because you are almost never buying one system.
Our published installation prices run from a single split up to a System 4, and they stop there. That is not an oversight. Past four indoor units on one condenser, a house stops being a sizing exercise and becomes a layout exercise: how the rooms group, how far apart they sit, and how many separate circuits make sense. A three-storey house with seven rooms to cool is usually two or three systems, and the sensible split is decided on site rather than from a table.
There is a second reason not to chase one large system. Everything on one refrigerant circuit shares a compressor. If that compressor fails, the whole house is warm, not one floor. Splitting a landed house across separate systems costs a little more in condensers and buys you redundancy that genuinely matters in a house people live in every day.
Pipe runs are the constraint nobody mentions
In a flat, the distance from the fan coil to the condenser is short and roughly the same for every unit. In a landed house it can vary enormously — a ground-floor family room might be metres from the condenser platform while an attic bedroom is on the other end of the building.
Refrigerant pipe length is not free. Longer runs mean more pressure drop, more refrigerant in the circuit, and more places for a joint to sit hidden inside a wall. The pipe run has to be designed for, not discovered.
The question to ask before you accept any quote: where exactly will the condenser sit, and how far is it from the furthest fan coil it serves? If the installer cannot answer in metres, the quote is a guess. On a house, that guess is the difference between a system that performs and one that never quite does.
Where the condensers go is your decision — and it has consequences
An HDB flat has a ledge, and the ledge decides for you. Our note on what HDB allows on an aircon ledge covers that side of it. A landed house gives you choices, which means you can get it wrong.
Four things worth walking the site for before the position is fixed:
- Noise across the boundary. A condenser bank running at night against a party wall is one of the most common sources of neighbour friction in landed areas. Stand where your neighbour's bedroom window is and look back at where the condensers are going.
- Heat with nowhere to go. Condensers reject heat. Put several of them in a narrow side passage with a wall on both sides and they end up breathing their own hot air, which quietly costs you capacity on exactly the hottest afternoons.
- Servicing access. Someone has to reach these units three or four times a year for the life of the house. A condenser on a flat roof with no safe access becomes an expensive visit every time, or worse, a skipped one.
- Rain and sun. Units survive weather, but a position that takes the full afternoon sun with no shading works harder than one that does not.
The timing decision that costs the most
This is the one landed owners most often discover too late, and it only applies if building work is happening.
If your house is being rebuilt or you are in the middle of an A&A, the refrigerant piping, drainage and power for the aircon should go in before the ceiling closes. Done then, everything is concealed and there is no trunking anywhere. Done afterwards, the piping has to run on the surface in trunking, or ceilings have to be reopened.
The window is genuinely short — it opens when the frame is up and closes when the ceiling boards go on, and nobody on site will think to tell you it is closing. If a builder is on your house now, ask them this week when the ceilings are due to close, and get the aircon first fix in before that date.
It is worth saying plainly that this is not an upsell. It is the single cheapest thing on this page and it is free if you act at the right moment.
Electrical capacity is a real question here
One system in a flat is a small addition to an existing distribution board. Two or three systems in a house, with the condensers grouped in one place, is a load question that deserves an actual answer.
Before installation is scheduled, someone should confirm that the distribution board has spare ways for the circuits being added and that the incoming supply comfortably carries the new load alongside everything else in the house. On a new build or an A&A, this is easy because the electrical design is still open. On an existing house it is a check, not a formality, and it is better done at survey than on installation day with the walls already cut.
Servicing is where landed houses actually save
More indoor units sounds like more running cost, and for electricity it is. For maintenance, it works the other way, because our servicing prices drop per unit as the count rises.
General servicing is $45 for one unit, $70 for two, $95 for three, $115 for four, and $25 per unit from five units upward. A landed house with eight fan coils is therefore serviced at the $25-per-unit rate, not eight times the single-unit price. Chemical wash follows the same shape — $135 for one unit, down to $100 per unit from five.
Two practical notes. First, do the whole house in one visit rather than a floor at a time; splitting it across visits gives away the per-unit saving entirely. Second, flag any high-level or roof-mounted units when you book, so the right access is planned rather than improvised on the day.
We do not sell annual packages or take money upfront for future visits, on a house or anywhere else.
What a survey should tell you before you commit
The site survey is free, and on a landed house it is doing real work rather than confirming a price. A useful one comes back with:
- how many separate systems the house needs, and which rooms group onto which condenser
- the proposed condenser position, and the pipe run in metres to the furthest fan coil on each system
- whether the distribution board can take the circuits, or what has to change first
- if building work is underway, the date by which first fix has to happen
- what is included and what is not — our note on standard installation scope sets out the baseline
If you want the numbers behind the systems themselves, the full installation cost breakdown covers per-system pricing and what sits inside it, and how BTU sizing works covers getting each room right rather than each floor roughly right.
If you want us to look at it
Tell us the number of storeys, the rooms you want cooled, and whether the ceilings are still open. If building work is in progress we will tell you the date that matters more than the quote. Installation is brand-agnostic and the site survey is free.
WhatsApp us on 9107 2601 — usually a reply within five minutes.