Ducted Air Conditioning Bondi Beach

Local knowledge

Ducted in Bondi Beach homes

Ducted at Bondi Beach is a house-and-semi story rather than a flat story. The art-deco and postwar blocks on the beachfront have slab or shallow flat roofs with nowhere to hide a fan coil and duct runs, so unless a top-floor owner can win strata approval for a bulkhead system, those units stay on multi-heads. The Federation cottages and interwar semis climbing toward Bondi Road are a different matter: their hip roofs give enough cavity for a slim ducted chassis, with supply outlets in the bedrooms and living areas and the return air in the hall. We zone a typical semi as living and bedrooms, and a rebuilt double-storey North Bondi home by level, so the upstairs bedrooms can run at night without cooling an empty ground floor.

The outdoor unit is where the local knowledge counts. On the Ben Buckler headland and along the Tamarama cliff streets the nor-easter and the southerly buster both arrive loaded with spray, so we mount the condenser on the leeward side of the house where possible, always corrosion-rated, on stainless fixings, with a clear path for rain to wash the coil. A shady south or west wall beats a sunny north one when everything else is equal. Ducted running cost here works out at roughly $1–$2 per hour whole-home, and because the sea breeze takes the edge off most afternoons, the system spends much of summer pulling the humidity out of the house rather than fighting 40°C heat.