Some air conditioning failures can wait until Monday. Others can’t. When the temperature hits 38°C, when you have an elderly parent or a newborn in the house, when your restaurant’s dining room is filling up, or when your server room is climbing past its thermal limit — you need someone on site now, not in three days.
We provide genuine 24-hour emergency air conditioning repair across Brisbane and South East Queensland. Not an answering machine and a callback on Tuesday: an actual after-hours technician, ARCtick-licensed, with a stocked van, dispatched to your address.
Our emergency vans carry the components that cause the overwhelming majority of sudden failures — capacitors, contactors, relays, thermistors, fan motors, control boards for common models, refrigerant and drain-clearing equipment — so most emergency calls are resolved in a single visit rather than being made safe and rescheduled.
When to call for emergency service
- Total cooling failure during extreme heat, especially with vulnerable occupants at home
- Burning smell, smoke, or scorch marks around the indoor or outdoor unit
- The system repeatedly tripping the circuit breaker or safety switch
- Loud grinding, banging or screeching from the compressor or fan
- Water pouring from the indoor unit into ceilings, walls or electrical fittings
- Refrigerant leak with hissing, ice formation or chemical odour
- Complete failure in a commercial kitchen, restaurant, retail floor or medical premises
- Server room, comms room or data cabinet cooling failure
- Aged care, childcare or healthcare facility cooling loss
- Any situation where continued operation appears unsafe
Safety first: if you smell burning, see smoke, or the unit is sparking, switch off the isolator or circuit breaker immediately and call us. Do not keep resetting a breaker that keeps tripping.
Benefits of Our Emergency Service
- True 24/7 availability, including nights, weekends and public holidays.
- Rapid response — typically 1 to 3 hours across metropolitan Brisbane, with priority given to health, safety and business-critical situations.
- Fully stocked emergency vehicles so most faults are fixed on the first visit.
- Licensed and insured technicians — ARCtick refrigerant handling and QBCC-licensed electrical work, even at 2am.
- Transparent after-hours pricing quoted before work begins. No open-ended hourly bills.
- Triage over the phone — sometimes we can talk you through a fix and save you the call-out fee entirely. We’ll tell you if that’s the case.
- Temporary solutions where needed, including portable cooling for critical commercial sites while parts are sourced.
- All system types — split, multi-head, ducted, cassette, package and light commercial.
Our Emergency Response Process
Call and immediate triage
You speak to a person, not a queue. We take the symptoms, brand, model and location, assess urgency and give you immediate safety advice — usually to isolate power if there’s any sign of electrical fault.
Dispatch and ETA
The nearest available technician is dispatched and you’re given a realistic arrival window along with the after-hours call-out rate before anyone leaves. Where possible we identify the likely fault from your description so the technician arrives with the right part.
Rapid on-site diagnosis
On arrival, the technician isolates power where necessary, makes the site safe, and works through a fast diagnostic sequence: error codes, electrical component testing, refrigerant pressures, airflow and drainage.
Immediate quote and approval
You’re told what has failed, what it costs to fix now, and what your options are. Nothing proceeds without your approval, and we’ll be honest if a repair can safely wait until business-hours rates apply.
On-the-spot repair
Most faults — capacitors, contactors, fan motors, sensors, blocked drains, leak repairs and recharge — are completed during the same visit.
Interim measures if parts are unavailable
If a specialised part must be ordered, we make the site safe, restore partial operation where possible, arrange temporary cooling for critical premises, and book the return visit at standard rates rather than emergency rates.
Testing, report and follow-up
Full operational test, written report of the fault and the repair, warranty details, and advice on preventing a repeat.
Indicative Emergency Costs
AUD including GST. Emergency rates reflect after-hours attendance; the call-out fee covers travel and the first period on site, and the repair is quoted separately before work starts.
Attendance | Indicative cost |
Business hours priority call-out (same day) | $150 – $250 |
After hours, weeknights (5pm – 10pm) | $250 – $420 |
Late night / overnight (10pm – 7am) | $350 – $600 |
Saturday | $250 – $450 |
Sunday | $300 – $520 |
Public holidays | $400 – $700 |
Emergency labour, per hour after initial period | $150 – $260 |
Commercial critical response (contracted clients) | negotiated under agreement |
Repairs on top of attendance are charged at the same parts and labour rates as our standard repair service — for example a capacitor replacement at $180–$340, drain clearing at $150–$320, fan motor at $380–$850, or leak repair and recharge at $450–$1,100.
Customers on one of our maintenance plans receive reduced or waived emergency call-out fees and front-of-queue dispatch.
Brands We Repair in an Emergency
Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Fujitsu, Panasonic, ActronAir, LG, Samsung and Carrier, plus most other brands sold in Australia. Our emergency vans carry the common failure parts for these brands, and our technicians know each manufacturer’s error code sets — which is why telling us the code when you call often means we arrive with the exact part already on board.
Service Areas
24/7 emergency coverage across North Brisbane, South Brisbane, East Brisbane, West Brisbane, Brisbane CBD, Indooroopilly, Toowong, Chermside, Carindale, Sunnybank, Logan, Ipswich, Redlands and Moreton Bay. Response times are typically fastest in the inner and metropolitan suburbs and slightly longer for outer areas such as Ipswich and northern Moreton Bay.
Frequently Asked Questions
How fast can you actually get to me?
Across metropolitan Brisbane, typically within one to three hours. Outer areas may take longer. During extreme heat events demand is very high, so we triage by urgency — vulnerable occupants, safety risks and critical commercial sites are prioritised.
Is my situation an emergency, or can it wait?
Call us and we’ll tell you honestly. Anything involving burning smells, smoke, sparking, repeated breaker tripping or water entering electrical fittings is always an emergency. Loss of cooling is an emergency when there are infants, elderly or unwell people in the home during extreme heat, or when a business cannot operate. A unit that’s simply noisy or cooling weakly on a mild day can usually wait for a cheaper business-hours booking, and we’ll say so.
How much more does after-hours cost?
The call-out fee is higher — roughly double to triple a standard business-hours attendance depending on the time and day. The parts and repair labour are charged at normal rates. You get the full figure before we dispatch.
Can you fix it on the first visit?
In most cases, yes. Our emergency vans carry the components responsible for the large majority of sudden failures. Compressors, specific control boards and brand-specific parts sometimes need ordering, in which case we make the site safe and return at standard rates.
What should I do while waiting for the technician?
If there is any sign of electrical fault, turn off the isolator or circuit breaker. Otherwise, turn the system off to prevent further damage, close curtains and blinds, use fans to move air, stay hydrated, and move vulnerable people to the coolest part of the house. If water is leaking, place a container under it and turn the unit off.
Do you offer emergency support for businesses?
Yes. We hold emergency response agreements with restaurants, retailers, medical practices, aged care facilities, childcare centres and offices, including guaranteed response windows, after-hours access arrangements and temporary cooling equipment where needed.
Will you damage my property working at night?
No. Our technicians work with the same care and site protection at midnight as at midday — drop sheets, contained work areas and a clean site at handover.
Do you warranty emergency repairs?
Yes. Parts carry the manufacturer’s warranty and our workmanship is warranted for 12 months, exactly as with a business-hours repair.
Can I avoid emergencies altogether?
Largely, yes. The great majority of the emergency failures we attend in January were visible as developing faults in a routine spring service — a weak capacitor, a partially blocked drain, a slow refrigerant leak. An annual service before summer is by far the cheapest insurance against a 2am call-out.
