Ask three companies how often to service your aircon and you’ll get three answers, usually correlated with how badly each one wants the booking. The truth is that frequency depends on three things: how many hours the unit runs, what’s in the air around it, and how much you’ll suffer if it fails. Here’s the schedule we actually recommend to our own customers.
Bedrooms: every 6–9 months
A bedroom unit runs perhaps eight hours a night in filtered indoor air. A service wash twice a year keeps the coil and drainage healthy, with a chemical overhaul every 12–18 months when airflow starts to fade. If someone in the house has asthma or sinus trouble, shorten that by a third — the blower wheel is where the mould lives.
Living rooms: every 4–6 months
Living areas run longer hours with more door-opening, more dust and more people. Quarterly washes are worthwhile for big families; twice yearly suits a quieter household. Watch the drainage here — living room units are the ones that stain walls when the pan overflows during a gathering.
Anything near a kitchen: every 3–4 months
Cooking oil vapour is the fastest coil-killer we see. It lands on the fins as a sticky film that binds dust into a felt-like mat no household spray can shift. If your unit faces an open kitchen, book more frequent washes and expect a yearly overhaul — and know that it’s still far cheaper than the early compressor death that a suffocated coil causes.
Shops, offices and cafés: quarterly, minimum
Commercial units run 10–14 hours daily, often ceiling cassettes that hide their condition until they drip on a customer. Quarterly maintenance with performance readings logged is the standard we set in our annual programmes — the log matters, because a slow decline in cooling is invisible day to day but obvious on paper.
Roadside and highway-facing units: shorten everything
Homes near Jalan Langat or the KESAS highway collect fine black dust that clogs condensers outside as fast as coils inside. If a white tissue wiped on your condenser fins comes away grey in a month, treat your location as “kitchen grade” and service accordingly.
The signals that override any schedule
- Musty smell at start-up — the blower needs a chemical clean now, not next quarter
- Water dripping from the casing — drainage is already blocked
- Noticeably weaker airflow at the same fan setting
- The unit runs continuously without reaching the set temperature
Any of these means the schedule has already slipped — book the visit and reset the clock.
