The installers have gone, the new unit is cold, and the invoice is in a drawer. Three months later someone says "you should service it", and someone else says a new aircon does not need servicing at all. Both are half right, and acting on the wrong half costs money in one of two ways: you pay for a deep clean the unit does not need, or you let the one window in which installation faults are cheap to claim run out without ever looking.
This guide is for an aircon that is less than a year old, installed by us or by anyone else. It covers what actually builds up on a new unit, what a first visit should be for, what you should not buy yet, and what to write down now so that a problem in month 14 is a phone call instead of an argument.
What a new unit does and does not need
A new aircon has clean coils, a clean blower and an empty drain pan on day one. What it does not have is any protection from the flat it lives in. Dust arrives with the air that is pulled through the filter, and in the first months a lot of that dust is not household dust at all. If the flat was renovated, if furniture was still being delivered, if the windows were open during works, the filter is catching fine debris that was never part of normal living. The filter is the first part to show it, and it is the part you can wash yourself.
The coil, the blower wheel and the drain are a slower story. They take months of wet-and-dry cycles to build a layer worth removing. That is why the published intervals on our price list matter here: routine servicing is described there as 3-monthly maintenance, a chemical wash as deep coil cleaning every 6 to 12 months, and a chemical overhaul as a job for every 2 to 3 years or for severely fouled units. A unit that is a few months old is nowhere near the point where a chemical wash or an overhaul is the right purchase. If anyone offers you one for a unit this young, ask what they found that justifies it.
The first visit is not really about cleaning
The more useful purpose of a first service on a new unit is inspection while the installation warranty is still running. On our installations that warranty is 2 years on the workmanship, on top of the manufacturer's 5-year compressor warranty on the units, as set out on our installation cost page. If someone else installed yours, the equivalent is whatever is written on their invoice or quotation. Either way, the period is a window. Faults in the work show up slowly, and the best time to find them is before the window closes.
Here is what installation faults tend to look like in the first year, and what to look for:
- Water where there should be none. A drip from the indoor unit, a damp patch on the wall below it, or water at the trunking joints. A drain with too little fall, or a joint that was not sealed, may behave on day one and only show itself after the drain starts to carry real load. Our post on ceiling stains from trunking condensation explains the difference between condensation on the pipe and a drain fault.
- Cooling that fades. A unit that was cold in month one and merely cool in month eight is telling you something. One possible reason is a slow loss of refrigerant at a joint. It is also possible that the filter is simply choked, so wash the filter first. If the filter is clean and the cooling is still fading, that is exactly the kind of fault a pre-check and a leak detector check are for.
- New noises. A rattle or a hum that was not there at handover, especially from the outdoor unit, can point to a loose bracket, a pipe touching the wall or a fan that has shifted. Record a short phone video of the sound so you can play it back to whoever comes.
- Pipe insulation and trunking. Insulation that has come apart or trunking that has lifted away from the wall is easy to spot from the floor, and costs almost nothing to fix when it is caught early.
None of these is a given. Most new installations are fine. The point is that a first-year visit is cheap insurance against the few that are not, and the answer to "is it covered?" is much simpler when the unit is 5 months old than when it is 23.
When to book it
There is no single right month, and nobody who gives you one number for every flat is being straight with you. Here is how to decide:
- Lived-in, quiet flat, one or two people, no works nearby: wash the filters yourself, follow the guidance in our filter-washing guide, and book the first visit well inside the installation warranty rather than at the very end of it.
- Renovated flat, or works still going on upstairs or next door: the filter will clog faster than you expect, so check it more often. If you did the installation before the renovation was finished, read our post on when to install around a renovation, because the sequence affects how much dust the unit has already taken in.
- Unit running most of the day, a home office or a baby's room: the unit is working harder, so any fault will appear sooner. Book earlier.
- Anything that looks like a fault, at any age: do not wait for a scheduled visit. Water, ice, a burning smell or a unit that trips the breaker is a call now, not a call at the six-month mark.
What not to pay for yet
On a unit this young, general servicing is the right job. On our price list that is $55 for 1 unit, $90 for 2 units and $120 for 3 units, and the 9-point pre-check is included with every service booking. A chemical wash starts at $135 for 1 unit, and it is the right tool for a coil that has real grime on it, not for a coil that has had a few months of use.
If a technician recommends a chemical wash or overhaul on a unit under a year old, ask to see the coil. A good technician will show you the fins or take a photo. If the coil looks clean, the money is better spent elsewhere. If it does look fouled, the question to ask is why, because a new unit with a badly fouled coil points at what happened around it, such as works dust or a missing filter, and not at the unit.
Write these down now
This is the part that saves the most trouble later, and it takes about ten minutes:
- The installation date and the company that did it. Keep the invoice or quotation where you can find it, as a photo on your phone as well as on paper.
- The warranty terms in writing. The length of the installation warranty and what it covers. Our own is on the installation cost page. For anyone else's, it should be on the document you were given, and if it is not, ask for it in writing now.
- Each unit's nameplate. Photograph the brand, model and serial number on every indoor and outdoor unit. The manufacturer asks for this first, and the nameplate on an outdoor unit is not something you want to be reading from a ledge later.
- The manufacturer's warranty card. Read it once. If it lists conditions, such as who is allowed to install or service the unit, you want to know that while the unit is new, not when you are making a claim. We cannot tell you what your brand's card says, and we will not guess.
- A baseline. Note how cold the room gets with the set temperature you normally use, how long it takes, and what the unit sounds like. When something changes, you will have a comparison that is better than memory.
Our post on what a workmanship warranty actually covers goes into the split between the company's warranty and the manufacturer's. If your unit came with a new condo, the clocks run differently, and our handover guide is the better place to start. If you bought the unit online and paid only for installation, this post on installation-only quotes covers what that quote should contain.
If something does turn up
Describe what you saw, when it started, and what you did first. A technician who knows that the filter was washed last week, the remote is on Cool and the drip began after heavy rain can narrow the problem before arriving. If a repair is needed, a standard repair for drainage or electrical faults is $80 on our price list, a leak detector check is $180 flat, and compressor or PCB work is quoted on site because the price varies by site. If the fault turns out to be covered by the installation warranty, that is a different conversation, and one reason the paperwork above matters.
If you would like us to look at it
Tell us how many units you have, when and by whom they were installed, and what you have noticed. WhatsApp us on 9107 2601 and we will tell you what the visit would cover before we come. The full price list is on our pricing page.