Emergency chiller hire high rise — it doesn’t get more complex than this. When a commercial office building in Sydney lost its chiller, the entire cooling system for one floor went down. There was no crane access, the affected tenancy was on level 20, and the client needed a fully ducted solution. Aircon Rentals got it done in under 24 hours.

The Situation

A floor of a Sydney office building lost cooling after its chiller failed. For the tenants, that meant an unusable workspace — disrupted operations, and depending on the time of year, a completely unworkable space. The building needed a temporary solution fast, one that worked with the existing ducted system already in place.

The client was clear from the outset: they didn’t want portable spot coolers placed around the floor. That’s the standard fix for a single-floor cooling problem in a commercial building, and it works well in many situations. Here, though, the client had a ducted setup and wanted temporary cooling delivered the same way — integrated, invisible, and not disruptive to the tenants using the space.

The Challenge

Getting a temporary chiller into a building is straightforward when there’s external access. A crane lifts the unit to the required level and the installation team takes it from there. This job had none of that. The building offered no viable external access point, ruling out any crane-based solution entirely.

That left one option: through the cargo lifts. A 120kW air-cooled chiller is an outdoor machine. Getting it to level 20 meant stripping it down into sections small enough to fit the lifts, moving each piece up floor by floor, and putting the whole thing back together on-site before anyone could commission it.

It was a significant design and engineering challenge. The client also needed it done without touching the building’s structure. No cutting, no penetrations beyond what was already there.

The Solution

The Aircon Rentals operations team split into two shifts and worked through the night. The chiller came apart in sections, went up through the cargo lifts, and was reassembled on level 20. Every component had to be handled carefully. This wasn’t a logistics exercise; it was a precision technical operation. The unit needed to come back together correctly and perform to spec once commissioned.

Once on the floor, the team connected the temporary chiller hire unit into the building’s existing ducted system, delivering the integrated cooling solution the client had asked for. No spot coolers. No visible external equipment. No structural modifications. Just a working emergency cooling solution that met the client’s exact requirements.

“The client was adamant about a ducted solution and no structural modifications. With no crane access and a level 20 installation, that meant disassembling a 120kW chiller and getting it up through the cargo lifts. The team worked two shifts straight and had it running in under 24 hours.” — Aircon Rentals Operations Team

The outcome:

The chiller was running in just over 24 hours. Tenants came back to a working floor. No structural work, no spot coolers sitting in corners, nothing to suggest the building had just had an emergency chiller hire installation done overnight.

What building and facilities managers can take from this:

Know your building’s access limitations before something fails. Cargo lift dimensions, floor load ratings, and existing penetrations all determine what’s actually possible when a crew shows up with equipment. Having those details ready cuts hours off the response.

Ducted systems need ducted solutions. A temporary chiller tied into the existing ductwork causes far less disruption than spot coolers scattered across a tenancy. If your building runs on a ducted setup, that’s how the backup cooling should run too.

A contingency plan for critical floors can mean the difference between a one-day fix and a week of downtime. For more on how we work with commercial building operators, see our commercial and retail industry page or browse our full range of chiller hire options.

Need emergency chiller hire for a high rise or commercial building? Aircon Rentals operates 24/7 across Sydney and all of Australia. Call 1800 626 996 or enquire online.