Air Conditioner

Shopping for air conditioners was no easy task. Gain City has a wide variety of brands on display in its showrooms, however it can be pretty confusing what with all the models and technicalities about compressors, condensers, inverters, fan coils, System 1-4, BTU capacity (British Thermal Units, if you must know..) etc. 

The net of it is that you will definitely need a knowledgeable and helpful sales person to assist you. From what I learnt, for the common split unit air cons there is basically the "outdoor unit" (the compressor unit), and the "indoor unit" (the fan coil unit, also called "blower" sometimes). A System-3 means there is 1 outdoor unit supporting 3 indoor units. Cooling capacity of the indoor units typically run from 9,000, 12,000, and 15,000 all the way till 24,000 BTUs. The more up-to-date but expensive "inverter" technology systems are more energy-efficient. 

The sales guy who attended to me at the Gain City I visited came across as something of a BS'er and I didn't feel comfortable with some of his advice, so I decided to try an online search instead and found CT Aircon. (www.ctair-con.com.sg). Just as well as I have read about many forumers having issues with Gain City, and I myself have had bad experiences with their call centre. Gain City's website is a good resource to compare brands and models though.

CT Aircon has a pretty comprehensive website with lots of attractive offers.  They tout that they have "8 phone lines", and "over 10 years of installation experience". In liaising with them however I somehow got the feeling that they were a fairly new and small setup - always the same guy answering the phone and emails.. The technical staff who came to my place were also wearing t-shirts bearing some other company's name, so maybe CT Aircon is some kind of online mediator, or perhaps the business itself is new however the staff per se have many years of experience.

No matter, a sales guy / technician came to my apartment to assess my needs and made calculations about my space, and then recommendations as to what I would need to sufficiently cool the areas. This was important as the previous air-con units that came with the apartment were inadequate as I have a high-ceilinged apartment. In the end I installed 2 high BTU indoor units (18,000 BTUs) as I wanted to be absolutely sure my dining and living areas would not be under-cooled. There was concern about whether a System-2 aircon would be able to support 2x18,000 BTU indoor units, and CT Aircon recommended I go with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries or Daikin. If I chose a Mitsubishi Electric Starmex, they recommended I play safe and get a System-3 to support the 2 indoor units.  

After CT Aircon followed up with quotes, I picked MHI. 

MHI is a different company from the more widely known Mitsubishi Electric, however both companies along with many others share parentage in the Mitsubishi conglomerate. ME and their Starmex line of home aircons is more popular due to their heavy advertising featuring prominent actor/director Jack Neo, while MHI seem to largely be involved in industrial equipment. Strange that they should also have home air conditioners, however I selected MHI due to their price (well with ME you are paying for their marketing costs), and based on the looks of the air-con unit - pure white. I have some Daikin units in my apartment still and these are not the most appealing yellowy beige colour, although I have never had issues with my Daikin units performance-wise.

Aesthetics-wise, pure white with a bit of grey, perfect for my colour scheme

I am happy with my air-con installation by CT Aircon, and the installation itself is warrantied for a year. It is super important that air-con installations be done properly as you certainly won't want to have to deal with any  leakage or other problems. The CT Aircon installation guys even commented that my previous installation was not done well, as the piping and insulation near the condenser unit were very messy.

A note about renovations and installing new air-cons in old apartments: Have the air-con guys assess your apartment BEFORE your renovations begin, in case you need to do a leak / pressure test to confirm the existing piping in your walls are ok. I did the air-con assessments when a large proportion of my reno was already done, and if there were any leaks which might have been due to the piping in the walls I would have had to hack the walls! In the end I was able to retain all the existing piping and just changed the air-con units.

FYI, here's a link to a local site with pretty helpful info about aircons:

www.aircontalk.com