Wall split, ceiling cassette, multi-split or VRF — what's right for the job
A wall-mounted split is the default for a single bedroom, home office or living room. A ceiling cassette suits offices, retail and large square rooms because it blows in four directions and disappears into a suspended ceiling. A multi-split takes one outdoor unit and runs 2–5 indoor heads from it, which is the cleanest answer for a whole house or a small office where you don't want a row of condensers on the wall. VRF (Daikin) or VRV (Mitsubishi) is the commercial-grade big brother — one large outdoor unit feeding up to 50 indoor heads with individual room control, used in offices, hotels and retail. Specifying the right type matters more than the brand: a £3,000 split in the wrong configuration costs more long-term than a £4,000 multi-split done right.
Brands we install and why
We install Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Panasonic, Fujitsu, LG, Toshiba and Samsung. Each is chosen for parts availability in the South of England, real inverter efficiency (not paper SEER ratings), and genuine multi-year warranty performance. Daikin and Mitsubishi Electric carry the longest warranty programmes in the UK when registered correctly. We don't fit ultra-budget brands that look cheap on the quote but cost £400+ in a callout when a control board fails in year three and parts have a 6-week lead time from Asia.
How heat-load sizing actually works
Room-area sizing (the 100W per square metre rule of thumb) is a 1980s shortcut. We calculate against the actual heat load: room volume, glazing area and orientation (south-facing glass is roughly 4× the gain of north-facing), wall construction, ceiling height, expected occupancy, lighting load and equipment load (server cabinets, kitchen appliances, retail display lighting all matter). A correctly sized system runs at 40–60% of capacity most of the time, which is where inverter compressors are most efficient. An under-sized system runs flat-out and fails early; an over-sized system short-cycles, doesn't dehumidify, and feels worse than no air conditioning at all.
F-Gas, refrigerants and your warranty
Refrigerant is an EU/UK F-Gas regulated substance. Any installation, decommissioning, recharge or repair of the refrigerant circuit must be carried out by an F-Gas registered engineer with calibrated electronic gauges, recovery equipment and a logged commissioning record. Every Adapt install is commissioned with deep vacuum (below 500 microns), refrigerant weighed in by digital scale to manufacturer spec, and the commissioning sheet emailed to you within 24 hours. That sheet plus the warranty registration is what keeps your 5–7 year manufacturer warranty live.
Residential vs commercial installation differences
Residential installs are usually one or two indoor units per outdoor, finished to a domestic aesthetic — pipework hidden in trunking or chased into walls, condensate run into existing soil stacks, work scheduled to avoid the school run. Commercial installs add: BMS (building management system) integration, fire alarm interface, fresh air make-up, plant-room access, out-of-hours installation to protect trading, and CIBSE-compliant documentation for the building owner. We do both. The same team runs both. The standards don't drop on the smaller one.
What the install actually looks like on the day
Day starts at 8am. Floors and furniture covered, indoor unit position marked and agreed, core hole drilled cleanly through the wall, indoor unit mounted level, refrigerant pipework run inside white finishing trunking (or chased into the wall and re-plastered if agreed at quote stage), outdoor unit mounted on heavy-duty wall brackets or a ground stand, electrical connection back to a dedicated isolator, system pressure-tested with nitrogen, evacuated to deep vacuum, refrigerant weighed in, system run through a full commissioning cycle, you're walked through the remote and the WiFi app, and we leave the site cleaner than we found it. One unit, one day, in the vast majority of cases.
