How much does air conditioning servicing cost?
An annual service in London costs £120 to £180 per system excluding VAT and takes about an hour: coil and filter cleaning, condensate checks, a refrigerant performance check and an electrical inspection. Most manufacturers make annual servicing a condition of their 5 to 7 year warranties, so skipping it costs more than paying for it.
The service visit earns its fee in three ways. It keeps the warranty valid, because mainstream manufacturers require documented annual servicing. It keeps efficiency where it started, because a dirty coil can cost 10 to 20% of output, which you pay for in electricity. And it catches the small faults, a slow condensate blockage, a perishing isolation mount, before they become summer emergencies.
Multi-unit homes should be quoted per visit rather than per unit stacked at full price; the travel and setup happen once. Ask how a multi-system visit is priced before booking, and be wary of per-unit pricing that treats a second bedroom unit as a second full job.
Between professional visits, the only maintenance worth doing yourself is rinsing the indoor filters every month or two through summer. Five minutes with lukewarm water keeps airflow honest and the coil cleaner for longer. Everything involving refrigerant, panels beyond the filter clips or the outdoor unit belongs to the annual visit.
The one thing an annual service should never routinely include is refrigerant. A sealed system does not consume it; an engineer proposing a yearly top-up is describing a leak they have chosen not to find.
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