Commercial Aircon Water Leak Repair in Singapore
Water is coming through a ceiling into a space where staff work, customers walk, or stock sits. You need it stopped, and afterwards you need something in writing that says what happened.
This page covers what to do in the next ten minutes, why commercial leaks behave differently to the ones in flats, and the reason the same leak so often comes back a couple of months later.
The first ten minutes, before anyone arrives
Isolate the unit at the distribution board. Not the wall controller. If water has reached wiring inside the casing, the controller does not cut the circuit.
Contain, then cordon. Buckets under the drip, then something visible around the wet floor. Under the Workplace Safety and Health Act a wet floor in an area staff and customers use is a hazard you are expected to manage. A cordon costs nothing and matters a great deal if somebody slips.
Move equipment out from underneath. Servers, tills, printers and stock first. Water tracks along ceiling tiles and comes down somewhere other than where it started.
Photograph everything before you clean up. The ceiling, the floor, the affected equipment, and one wide shot of the room. Insurers and landlords want the state at discovery, and once you have mopped, that evidence no longer exists.
Check the floor below and the neighbouring unit. Commercial ceiling voids run across tenancy boundaries. You would rather find out yourself than be told.
Then call. 96440652.
Why a commercial leak is a different job
In a flat, the fan coil is on a wall, drains by gravity through a short pipe, and the whole run is visible. In a commercial ceiling, almost none of that holds.
What changes | Why it matters |
|---|---|
You find the leak from the stain, not the drip. Water has been up there for a while | |
Condensate is usually lifted by a pump rather than gravity | A pump is an electrical component that fails, and when it does the pan overflows with nothing slowing it |
Drain runs are long and often shared | Clearing the section you can reach does not mean the line is clear |
Pans are larger and hold more water | An overflow releases much more, much faster |
The ceiling void carries cabling and lighting | Water reaches electrics before it reaches your floor |
The condensate pump is the one to understand. Unlike a gradual blockage it gives almost no warning. A pump that has run for four years sounds completely normal right up until the morning it does not run at all.
The reason your last leak came back
This is the most common thing businesses tell us when they call after using someone else.
A technician attends, finds the blockage near the outlet, clears it, the water stops, everyone is satisfied. Six to eight weeks later the same unit leaks again.
The blockage you can reach is rarely the whole problem. Condensate lines build biofilm along their entire length, and in Singapore’s humidity that happens quickly. Clearing 300mm of a twelve metre run removes the symptom and leaves the cause exactly where it was.
We see the residential version of this constantly. One customer had cleaned their unit several times themselves and it still leaked on long runs. The drain was partly blocked, but the real problem was a heavily contaminated indoor coil causing water to collect inside the unit instead of reaching the drain at all. Clearing the pipe alone would have bought them another few weeks.
The commercial version is the same fault with a bigger ceiling above it.
What we do instead. Power-flush the full condensate run from pan to discharge point, test the pump under load rather than confirming it hums, and check the fall on the pipe wherever we can access it. If the fall is wrong, no amount of flushing fixes it permanently, and we will tell you that rather than book you in again in two months.
What happens on site
Stop and contain. Isolate, catch, and stop the spread. Everything else comes after.
Diagnose properly. Pump, pan, drain line, coil, or refrigerant. A frozen coil that dumps water when it thaws is a refrigerant or airflow fault wearing a plumbing disguise, and clearing the drain will not touch it.
Flush the whole condensate run, not the accessible section.
Test or replace the pump.
Check refrigerant pressure and coil condition while we are up there, because both cause leaks indirectly.
Written report. One page: what was found, what was done, what still needs attention.
The paperwork you will need afterwards
A commercial leak is rarely just a repair. It is usually also a conversation with a landlord, a managing agent, an insurer, or the tenant next door. None of them accept “the aircon guy fixed it”.
Our report gives you the diagnosed cause, the corrective action, the attendance date, and photographs. Ask for it in writing and keep it even if the leak looked minor.
Two reasons that matters in Singapore specifically.
Strata premises. For units in a strata-titled building, the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act sets a presumption on inter-floor leakage: where water passes from an upper unit to a lower one, the upper unit is presumed responsible unless it can show otherwise. If the source was common property rather than your equipment, that changes who pays, and the only way to establish it is a technician’s report naming the source.
Tenancy. Most commercial leases split responsibility between the landlord’s plant and the tenant’s fit-out. Whether the cassette above your ceiling is yours or theirs depends on the lease, and the argument goes considerably better with a report naming the failed component.
Mould. Water damage guidance generally puts the window at 24 to 48 hours before mould begins establishing on damp material. If ceiling tiles, carpet or plasterboard have been wet longer than that, drying is not enough and you should be replacing. We will tell you when we think you are past that line.
Getting us into your building
Worth saying plainly, because this is what actually delays commercial callouts and no competitor page mentions it.
Response time is not only about driving. In most commercial buildings, outside office hours, we need building management to authorise access, a security escort, a goods lift released, and sometimes a permit to work above a ceiling. If your building requires a permit with 24 hours’ notice, no aircon company in Singapore is reaching you in two.
You can remove most of that delay in advance:
- Keep your building management after-hours number where whoever is on site can find it
- Ask your managing agent now what an emergency contractor needs to get in at 9pm
- If the building requires contractor registration, register us before you need us. Ten minutes on a quiet day, impossible on a bad one
When you call, tell us the building name and whether access is arranged. It changes how we schedule.
Coverage and hours
Islandwide, with no travel surcharge. We take calls until 11pm, seven days a week, and attend same-day wherever the building will let us in.
We are a small team of experienced technicians rather than a large fleet, which means you get people who have done this for a decade and who answer their own phone. It also means we are straight with you about when we can get there instead of promising a two-hour arrival we cannot control.
What we guarantee
Chemical overhaul work carries a three-month workmanship warranty. Replacement parts carry one year. Compressors carry five years.
If a leak we repaired returns at the same location and the cause is the work we did, we come back and put it right.
Questions
How fast can you get here?
Same-day for calls during our operating hours. The honest variable is not our driving, it is your building’s after-hours access process. Tell us on the call whether that is already arranged.
Can a leaking aircon start a fire?
Yes, and this is not a scare tactic. Water in a ceiling void reaches lighting circuits and cabling. SCDF’s fire analysis report on fan coil unit fires identifies condensation as a factor that makes poor internal wiring connections considerably more dangerous. If water has reached anything electrical, isolate that circuit and treat it as urgent. If you can see smoke or sparking, call 995 first.
What is the most common cause you find?
Condensate pump failure, then drain lines that were partially cleared at some point and re-blocked.
Will you work around our trading hours?
Yes. For retail and F&B we would rather attend after closing where the leak is contained. If it is running freely, we come now and work around you.
Do you handle the ceiling and the drying?
No. We stop the leak, fix the cause, and document it. Ceiling repair, drying and reinstatement are a different trade. We will tell you plainly what needs doing so you can brief them, rather than pretend it is our expertise.
Will your report satisfy our insurer?
We give you a written technical report naming the cause, the action taken, and the date. Whether a claim is accepted is between you and the insurer, but they will not consider one without this.
Who are we dealing with?
Vedha Construction Private Limited, UEN 201624486M, trading since 2016. 11 Mandai Estate #09-01, ELDIX, Singapore 729908.
Call 96440652. If water is currently reaching anything electrical, isolate that circuit first and call us second.
