Air Conditioning
Discreet air-to-air units that cool the heatwaves and heat efficiently in winter
Sleep through the heatwaves, heat only the rooms you use in winter — one discreet system doing both, fitted tidily by builders who make good behind themselves.
See How It Works
Two drawings. How the system works, and what it does to your money.
*Illustrative guide figures while launch pricing is finalised — your exact numbers follow the free survey.
What We Do
Air conditioning in a London home is no longer a luxury — and done properly, it earns its keep all year. A modern air-to-air system cools, dries and filters the rooms you actually use in summer, then reverses the cycle in winter to become efficient electric heating for those same rooms. OKPW surveys, sizes and installs the system in-house, with refrigerant runs and condensate routed tidily and the walls made good afterwards — the design & build difference, not a bolt-on box and trailing trunking.
What It Is For — and What It Is Not
Air conditioning cools rooms in summer and heats the same rooms in winter, efficiently. It is a different machine from the heat pump that replaces your boiler, and the difference matters for what it can do and what it can be funded by.
Right for your house if…
- You have rooms that overheat and shading, blinds and night purge have not solved it — a loft conversion, a south-facing bedroom, a glazed extension.
- You want to heat one or two rooms in the shoulder seasons without firing the boiler for the whole house. Working from home is where this pays.
- There is a lawful, neighbourly position outside for the condenser with room for airflow and access for servicing.
- You accept refrigerant pipe routes through the fabric — core drills, chased or boxed runs — and a condensate drain from each indoor unit.
- You have done the fabric first. Insulation and draught-proofing cut the load, which makes the unit smaller, quieter and cheaper to run.
Not what you want if…
- You want hot water from it. Air-to-air has no water circuit at all. That is the air-to-water heat pump, a different product on a different grant.
- You want to heat the whole house with it. Every heated room needs its own indoor unit — hallways, bathrooms and landings included. Rooms without one get nothing.
- You want ventilation or fresh air. It recirculates the air already in the room and supplies no outdoor air whatsoever. It is not a damp or condensation cure either.
- It is one uncomfortable bedroom. A single-room system typically runs £1,500 to £3,000 installed, which is poor value against blinds, external shading and a fan.
- You want the grant while keeping your gas boiler. Under the rules in force today a funded system must fully replace the existing heating, and hybrids are expressly excluded.
- You want cooling only, and you want to avoid a planning application. In England a cooling-only installation falls outside the permitted development class and needs planning permission.
There is a £2,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant for air-to-air heat pumps in England and Wales, and we will not deduct it from your price. It exists on paper but cannot yet be completed by anybody: no certification body has finished accreditation for air-to-air, no products appear on the MCS directory, and of around 45 vouchers applied for since May 2026 not one installation has been completed. We will tell you the moment that changes.
Our Process
Survey & Design
We assess the rooms, heat gains and the neatest routes for pipework, and size indoor and outdoor units correctly.
Installation
Indoor units, the outdoor condenser and refrigerant pipework installed with tidy routing, typically in one to two days.
Commissioning & Handover
The system is pressure-tested, commissioned and registered, with controls and app set up and explained.
Aftercare
Filter cleaning guidance and service support keep the system quiet, healthy and efficient.
What's Included
- Room-by-room cooling survey
- Indoor unit(s), sized and sited discreetly
- Outdoor condenser on brackets or base
- Refrigerant pipework & tidy routing
- Condensate management
- Electrical connection & protection
- Commissioning & refrigerant checks
- Controls & app set-up
- Walls & finishes made good
- Manufacturer warranty registration
What You Need to Know Before You Buy
What decides the price, the position and whether it is the right machine at all.
Why almost nobody qualifies for the grant
It is a heating grant, not a cooling one. To claim it the system must meet 100% of the property's space heating demand on its own, the gas boiler must go entirely, and hot water needs a new electric solution. That means an indoor unit in every heated room — a whole-house retrofit, not a comfort-cooling job. It is the honest reason most air conditioning customers will never be eligible.
The permitted development condition is about use, not just fitting
In England the outdoor unit is permitted development only where the heat pump is not used solely for cooling. The condition governs use, so we specify and commission a genuinely reversible unit and record it on the paperwork. A cooling-only install needs planning permission.
One outdoor unit, usually
The class permits one outdoor unit on a house that is not detached or on a block of flats, and two on a detached house. Adding a room later usually means a second outdoor unit, so if you might extend the system, we plan for it now. The unit is capped at 1.5 cubic metres on a house and 0.6 on a block of flats.
The noise calculation applies here too
37 dB(A) or less, measured one metre from the nearest window of a neighbour's habitable room, to the MCS method. We do the calculation before we commit to a position, not after your neighbour complains.
What it costs to run in summer
Typically 80p to £2 a night for a bedroom — a 2.5 kW inverter unit draws roughly 0.5–0.7 kW in steady state, so eight hours is 3–7 kWh at 26.11p. Call it a few pounds to about £10 across a five-night hot spell. A poorly insulated top-floor room will cost more.
What it costs to run in winter
Roughly 6.5p to 9p per useful kWh of heat across a season, against about 8.6p for a gas boiler — parity to modestly cheaper, and dearer than gas on the coldest days. Anyone claiming heat pumps are four times cheaper is confusing the efficiency ratio with the cost ratio: electricity costs about 3.6 times as much as gas per unit.
Adding it does not get you off gas
If the boiler stays, so does the gas standing charge — about £106 a year. The saving from air conditioning is heating one room without firing the boiler for the whole house, and we will do those sums for your house rather than quote you a percentage.
Ignore the headline efficiency number
SEER and SCOP are laboratory ratings for the best model at optimum capacity in an average European climate. Oversizing, long pipe runs, dirty filters, cold outdoor temperatures and multi-split part-load operation all reduce them, and there is no regulated minimum efficiency for air-to-air at all.
Refrigerant work is regulated
Installing and servicing equipment containing fluorinated gases requires personal qualifications and a company certificate, with leak-checking duties on larger systems. Ask any installer for their certificate number.
It needs cleaning to keep working
Filters need regular cleaning and the system an annual service. Site the indoor units where they can actually be reached — a high-level unit above a stairwell will not get cleaned, and a blocked filter costs you both efficiency and airflow.
VAT is 0% until 31 March 2027
Then 5% — about £200 on a £4,000 install. It applies because the unit is permanently fixed rather than portable, and HMRC decides borderline cases on the facts, so we confirm the treatment for your job rather than promising a rate up front.
Figures correct at 10 August 2026, from Ofgem installer guidance, the GPDO, HMRC, DESNZ and MCS. Prices are market guides, not a quote.
Why Choose OKPW
Cool in the Heatwaves
Quiet, filtered cooling for bedrooms and living rooms when London summers peak.
Heats in Winter Too
The same units run in reverse as efficient electric heating for the rooms you use most.
Tidy, Integrated Install
Routing planned and made good by our own builders — no trunking mess, no loose ends.
Make Your Home Worth More
A free, no-obligation survey by the people who do the work — covering Putney, Wandsworth, Richmond, Kingston, Streatham and Lewisham.
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