Get a commercial HVAC quote

How commercial HVAC quoting actually works

It is worth setting expectations, because commercial HVAC does not quote like a domestic installation. There is no meaningful price per square metre, and any supplier offering one is guessing. Cooling load comes from occupancy, lighting, equipment and solar gain — a 400 m² glazed office with 40 staff has several times the load of a 400 m² warehouse with six.

So a credible process runs: a survey of the building, a load calculation per zone, a system selection that follows from it, and only then a price. Any bidder who skips straight to a number has priced a guess, and you will find out which way the guess went during the first hot week.

What makes two quotes comparable

Bids for the same building routinely differ by a factor of two without either being unreasonable, because they are rarely quoting the same scope. The questions that expose the difference:

• What heat load did you design to, and how did you calculate it? The single most useful question you can ask. On a multi-zone building the answers diverge far more than the prices do.
• Is builder’s work included? Core drilling, fire stopping, structural support and making good are frequently outside the headline figure.
• Is the electrical work included, and has supply capacity been checked? If the incoming supply lacks headroom you may need a DNO upgrade, with its own cost and a lead time measured in months.
• Is commissioning a priced deliverable, with measured records? Not a tick sheet — measured airflows, superheat and subcooling, controls as configured.
• What are the maintenance obligations to keep the warranty valid? Manufacturer warranties on commercial plant are routinely conditional on documented planned maintenance.

What happens after you submit this form

There is no obligation at any stage, and if a good contractor thinks the honest answer is that you do not need what you have asked for — which happens most often with requests to cool an entire warehouse — it will say so. Our industrial cooling page explains why that particular brief is usually worth narrowing.

Meanwhile the cost guides give indicative ranges by system type, and the cost estimator produces a first-pass figure without anyone contacting you.