A ceiling cassette is the square panel set flush into the ceiling, usually with a louvre on each side. You find them in shops, offices, some condo living rooms and a fair number of landed homes. They are also the aircon most likely to get quoted off the wrong price list. Someone sees "aircon servicing from $45", books it for a cassette, and then hears a different number on the day. This guide is about that gap: where a cassette sits on our price list, what the published figures are, and what to settle before anyone climbs a ladder.
Everything below is a published aircons.sg rate or a plain description of the unit. We have not put a market average in this article, because ours are the only prices we can stand behind.
Check that you really have a cassette
Three kinds of indoor unit get mixed up, and each one sits on its own table of our price list:
- Wall-mounted. The machine hangs on the wall below the ceiling line. You can see it from across the room.
- Ceiling cassette. A square panel, flush with the ceiling, with air blowing out of the sides. The machine itself is above the panel, in the ceiling void.
- Ducted. No machine in sight at all, only long slots and a return grille. If that is what you have, read our ducted aircon guide instead, because ducted units use a different line again.
The one-second test: look up. A square panel that looks like part of the ceiling, with louvres on its edges, is a cassette. If it is on the wall, it is not.
What our price list says about cassettes
The cassette rates sit in their own section of the pricing page, priced per cassette indoor unit:
| Cassette indoor unit | Published price |
|---|---|
| General cassette clean | $60 per unit |
| Chemical cassette (the deep clean) | $340 per unit |
Three points follow from that table.
The wall-mounted tables do not apply. A wall-mounted general service is $45 for one unit, $70 for two, $95 for three and $115 for four. A wall-mounted chemical wash is $135 for one unit, and a chemical overhaul is $200. None of those figures are cassette prices, so do not work out a cassette bill from them. The pricing page says the same thing in as many words: the cassette section is not the ducted table and not the wall-mounted chemical wash table.
The price is per cassette, and the list shows one figure for each. Unlike the wall-mounted tables, the cassette section has no multi-unit table where the price per unit falls. So three cassettes on general servicing are 3 x $60 = $180 on the published figure, and three on the chemical line are 3 x $340 = $1,020. If you have several cassettes, ask for the total to be confirmed in writing on WhatsApp before the day, rather than assuming either a discount or no discount.
The deep clean is a different order of money. $340 against $60 is a little under six times as much per unit. That is a lot to spend on a unit that does not need it, and it is why the decision of which line you are on matters before the booking, not after.
General cassette clean or chemical: which one do you need?
The same logic we use for wall-mounted units holds here. A general service is routine maintenance. The deep clean is for a unit that is already showing signs. Those signs are the ones you can notice from the floor:
- A musty or sour smell when the unit starts up
- Air that has gone weak, or cooling that is slower than it used to be
- Water marks or dripping near the panel
- Dark streaks on the ceiling around the louvres
- A unit that has not been cleaned in years, or never
If none of those apply and the unit was cleaned recently, the $60 general clean is the sensible line. If several apply, the deep clean is the line that tackles them. If you are not sure, say so when you message us and send photos, and we will tell you which line applies. A smell is also not always a dirty coil, which is covered in what a chemical wash cannot fix.
For the logic of deciding unit by unit when you have a mix, chemical wash every aircon or just one works through it with wall-mounted prices. The principle carries over: do not wash every unit just because one smells.
What a cassette hides behind the panel
The photo above is a ceiling cassette that was taken down to the floor during an 8-unit chemical overhaul at a landed house in Bedok. It is here because it shows what the square panel conceals. The coil forms a ring around a large blower fan, and there is a drain fitting at the edge of the unit. That is the part that collects the dirt in the first place, and you cannot see any of it from the room.
It is also a fair picture of why this is a different job from a wall-mounted unit. On a wall unit, the technician is standing in front of the machine. On a cassette, the machine is in the ceiling, and getting at the coil and the blower means working overhead from a ladder, with the panel and often the ceiling around it to protect. The unit in the photo is on the floor because that is where it had to go to be cleaned properly.
We have not published a breakdown of what makes up the $340, so we will not invent one here. What the price list tells you is that it is the deep-clean line for a cassette indoor unit, priced per unit.
Questions to settle before you book
- Which line is this quote on? Cassette, wall-mounted or ducted. If the quote just says "aircon servicing", ask which unit type it was priced for.
- Is it per unit, and how many units are counted? Count the square panels in the ceiling, not the rooms.
- General or chemical? And what led to that choice? You should be told why, not just handed a number.
- What is under the unit? Furniture, a counter or a display shelf directly below a cassette has to be moved or covered. Tell the booking team about it.
- Is there a way into the ceiling? Most cassettes are reached by taking the panel off from below. If a unit has been boxed in or sits behind a fixed ceiling, tell us. The decision about the hatch is the subject of the false-ceiling access panel article.
- Is it a home or a shop? The price list in this article is the residential one. For a shop or office with a row of cassettes, or a VRV system, WhatsApp us the set-up. We have not published a commercial cassette table, so do not assume the home figures carry across.
A worked example, from the published figures
Take a landed home with three cassettes in the living and dining area and four wall-mounted units upstairs. On published prices:
- General service on the three cassettes: 3 x $60 = $180
- General service on the four wall-mounted units: $115, since four units together is a published figure
- Total for a general service visit across all seven: $295 on the published lines
If the three cassettes also needed the deep clean, that line would be 3 x $340 = $1,020 on the cassette figure, while the four wall-mounted units would stay on whichever line they need. Those are sums of published prices, not a package, and not a quote for your home. They are here to show how fast the total changes depending on which line each unit lands on, which is the whole reason to identify the unit type first.
What to send us
- Property type: condo, landed, HDB or shop
- A photo of each cassette from the floor, showing the panel
- How many cassettes, and how many wall-mounted units as well
- What the units are doing: smell, weak air, dripping or nothing
- When they were last serviced, and what was done
- Anything under the units that has to be moved
The short version
A cassette is the square ceiling panel, and it is on its own line of the price list: $60 per unit for the general clean and $340 per unit for the deep clean. The wall-mounted tables do not apply, and the cassette section shows one per-unit figure rather than a multi-unit table. Work out which unit type you have, decide between general and deep clean from what the unit is doing, and get the unit count and the total confirmed before the visit.
Not sure which line your units are on? WhatsApp us on 9107 2601 with a photo of each cassette and your unit count, and we will confirm the job. The full price list is on the pricing page.