Air Conditioning Replacement in Cairns
Swapping an old unit out properly, including the parts nobody thinks to look at.
- Old line set assessed, not assumed reusable
- Bracket and wall fixings checked or replaced
- Refrigerant recovered rather than vented
- Told honestly when repair is the better call
The old pipework is not automatically reusable
A like for like swap sounds like a short job, and sometimes it is. The thing that decides it is the copper already buried in the wall.
Older systems ran R22 with mineral oil. Current systems run R32 or R410A with synthetic POE oil at noticeably higher pressures. Mineral oil residue left in an old line set does not mix with POE. It collects, and it ends up sitting in a compressor with no way to shift it. Pipe diameter and wall thickness also differ between the old duty and the new one, so a line that was correct for the system coming off the wall is not automatically correct for the one going on.
Sometimes the run is sound, clean, the right size and worth keeping. Sometimes it needs flushing. Sometimes it needs replacing. What it should never be is assumed, and a quote that says nothing about the line set has assumed.
What else usually changes at a swap over
The bracket is next. Brackets that went up fifteen years ago in this region were often fixed into whatever happened to be there, and one that has been sitting in salt air ever since may have very little left in it. A new unit means a new footprint, a new weight and the same cyclone region wind load to carry, so the fixings and what they land in get looked at rather than tapped and trusted.
Then the penetration. Newer units are frequently a different width, so the existing hole ends up in the wrong place relative to the new chassis. That is how you get a sagging pipe or a drain that runs slightly uphill, and wet season condensate volumes here are completely unforgiving of a drain without fall.
Finally the circuit. Plenty of older installs share a circuit with something else or run off a board with no spare ways. That gets settled before the order goes in.
Taking the old one away
Refrigerant has to be recovered into a cylinder before the system comes off the wall. Venting it is illegal, and it is the reason some very quick removals are very cheap. The old unit then goes for metal recovery rather than to the tip.
It is worth asking anyone quoting how they intend to deal with the gas. The answer tells you most of what you need to know about the rest of their work.
When we will tell you not to replace it
If a unit is reasonably young, still on a current refrigerant, and the fault is something like a capacitor or a fan motor, replacing the whole system is money badly spent. In that case the sensible path is a repair, and we will say so even though the replacement would be the larger job for us.
Replacement earns its keep when a system is running on a phased-out gas, when the indoor coil is leaking, or when it was the wrong size for the room to begin with and no amount of work will change that.
Read the model number off the indoor unit and have a rough age in mind. Call 0489 266 523 and we can usually tell you which side of that line you are on before anyone drives out.
Where we work
- Babinda The wettest town in the country, where drainage and outdoor unit siting decide how long a system lasts.
- Bentley Park Small blocks and close-set houses, where the outdoor unit location decides the whole system design.
- Edge Hill Heritage Queenslanders with no wall cavity, where the pipe route is the hardest part of the job.
- Edmonton Southern corridor estates where most installs go into new slab-on-ground homes within months of handover.
- Innisfail Rebuild-era housing where the mounting standard is the whole conversation, and rainfall does the rest.
- Gordonvale Cane country, where the thing that quietly costs a system its capacity is what settles on the coil.
- Mission Beach Salt and cyclone exposure together, on properties that often sit empty between guests.
- Redlynch A valley suburb where humidity sits higher than the coast, so sizing for moisture removal matters more than raw output.
- Smithfield Heavy rental turnover near JCU, where reliability between tenants matters as much as the install itself.
- Trinity Beach Direct salt exposure off the water, where coil specification and condenser siting decide how long a system lasts.
- Tully Rainfall and humidity at the extreme end, on blocks where the supply run is often the real constraint.
Get a free quote
Give us the rooms and the suburb. Capacity is nearly always workable without a visit.
- Hours
- Weekdays 7 until 5, Saturday mornings
- Area
- Cairns, the beaches, and south to the Cassowary Coast
- Quotes
- In writing, itemised, no obligation
- We ask what the rooms are doing before we quote a size, not after.
- The quote covers the mount, the line set, the electrical and the make good, so there are no line items appearing on install day.
- Written, itemised, and yours to compare against anyone else's.