How much does air conditioning cost in London?
The starting figure is the easy part. This is what London itself does to it, and what the second room costs once you have had the first.
- REFCOM certified, REF1025662
- Daikin registered installer
The short answer
A wall mounted air conditioning system in a London home starts at £1,995 fitted for a bedroom sized 2.5kW unit, and around £2,595 for a 5.0kW living room unit, with VAT and the electrical work included. The price does not change with the postcode. What changes between one London address and another is the building: whether it is leasehold, whether the front elevation is in a conservation area, how far the outdoor unit has to sit from the indoor one, and whether the water can drain away without a pump. Those are the variables worth understanding before you compare quotes.
The postcode does not change the price. The building does.
We do not price by area. A 2.5kW unit in a Stanmore bedroom and a 2.5kW unit in a Peckham bedroom start from the same number, and distance is not a line on the quote.
That is worth saying because London is not one housing market, it is several stacked on top of each other, and the differences between them are real. A 1930s semi with a side return, a Victorian terrace with no side access at all, a purpose built flat on the fourth floor and a new build with a managed building all present genuinely different jobs. The unit is the same. The work around it is not.
What is different about a London install
These are the things that come up here far more often than they would anywhere else in the country, and they are the ones that most often separate two quotes for what looks like the same job.
A lot of London is leasehold
If you are a leaseholder, planning permission is not the only permission you need. Fixing a unit to an external wall or siting one on a balcony almost always needs the freeholder's written consent, and in a managed block there is often a set position the building has already decided on. None of that costs money directly. It costs time, and it is the single most common reason a London job stalls between quote and install. Ask early.
Conservation areas are everywhere
London has a very high density of conservation areas, and in one the permitted development rules stop the outdoor unit going on a wall or roof that fronts a highway. In practice that usually means routing to the rear, which is where we would put it anyway, but on a terrace with no rear access it can turn a simple job into a longer pipe run.
Terraces with no side return
Where there is no side access, the outdoor unit cannot simply go on the other side of the wall from the indoor one. The run gets longer, and pipework beyond the three metres included is charged at £45 per metre. On a deep Victorian plan that can be the difference between a standard install and a noticeably larger one, which is why it is settled at the survey and written into the quote.
Upper floor flats and where the water goes
Every starting price includes a gravity drain, which is what most ground and first floor rooms get. Where there is nothing for the condensate to fall towards, which is common in flats and converted lofts, the answer is a condensate pump at £160. It is a priced line on the quote rather than a surprise on the day.
Getting to the outdoor unit at all
Ground and first floor condenser positions are a normal day's work. Above that needs access equipment, and that is planned into the quote along with whether the job takes one visit or two. In central London, access and parking are often the genuine constraint rather than the installation itself.
Older consumer units
A 2.5 or 3.5kW unit runs off a fused spur. From 5.0kW up it wants a dedicated circuit back to the consumer unit, and plenty of London housing stock has boards with no spare way for one. A qualified electrician does the connection either way and it is included either way. If the board itself needs work, that is priced upfront.
Budgeting for more than one room
Most people start with one room, and most people who fit one room ask about a second within a couple of years. It is worth knowing two things before you start rather than after.
The first is that each additional room is a separate system with its own indoor unit, its own outdoor unit and its own electrical connection, so the second room is not materially cheaper than the first was. There is a saving in having us there once rather than twice, and it is smaller than most people expect.
The second is a planning point that catches people out. Under permitted development, a detached house gets the first two air source heat pumps automatically. Any other house, and any flat, gets only the first. So on a semi or a terrace, unit number two is the one that may need a planning application even though unit number one did not. If a whole house is the eventual plan, that is worth knowing at the start.
The order to do rooms in
If the budget only covers one room now, fit it in the room that is worst rather than the room you sit in most. A loft conversion or a south facing home office is unbearable for weeks a year and cheap to fix; a north facing living room is rarely the problem people think it is. The second unit almost always gets less use than the first.
Comparing quotes fairly
The figures on this site are fitted prices. They include the unit, the installation, up to three metres of pipework, the external trunking, the bracket or feet, a gravity drain, the electrical connection by a qualified electrician, commissioning and a handover pack, and VAT.
That matters when comparing, because a cheaper headline number frequently is not the same thing. Supply only prices, prices excluding the electrical work, and prices excluding VAT all exist in this market and all look better in a search result than they turn out to be. The question worth asking any installer is simply: is this the total, and what would make it go up?
The ranges this applies to
Every price is fully installed and includes the unit, the installation, the electrical work and VAT.
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