If there’s one thing I’ve learned as I’ve got older, it’s that British summers aren’t what they used to be. Whether that’s a ‘me’ thing or not, they definitely feel hotter, stickier and far less tolerable. And while that might just sound like an excuse for a moan, it’s also a fact. Last year, the Met Office confirmed that 2023 was the UK’s second-hottest on record, suggesting that heatwaves are no longer a rarity – they’re becoming the new summer normal.
I don’t mind the warmer temperatures occasionally, but the problem is that our homes were never built for it. Designed to keep the heat in, the average UK house turns into what feels like a furnace when the mercury climbs. The upstairs in my house is especially bad – it gets like a sauna in summer since everything is open plan and I have no loft, just high ceilings, so the heat rises up the stairs and stays there. There have been more sleepless summer nights than I care to remember, where I’ve found myself lying awake, windows wide open, fan at full blast - sweating perpetually from a heat you just can’t escape from.
So, I’ve been thinking about air con for a while now. Not the plug-in kind you stick on the floor with a big hose dangling out the window (although I’ve tried those too, most recently the EcoFlow Wave 3. They’re decent up to a point, but they’re noisy, a bit of a faff to set up every day and look pretty ugly, too. Then, when summer’s over, you have to find somewhere to store the thing. What I really wanted was a proper, fixed air con system - like the kind you see in Europe or the US. I’d looked into them briefly before but I always assumed they’d be outrageously expensive, or take weeks of builders in your house to install. And who can be bothered with all that?!
But then I was approached by BOXT, a company who traditionally specialises in boiler installs, who offered me the chance to try out their AC installation process from start to finish. The idea was that I’d go through the same steps as any paying customer, and the system would be installed and left in my home for me to use and live with, I’d just have to document the entire process and the end result. And that’s what brings me here, telling you guys exactly what it was like.
Ordering: surprisingly simple
Ordering a BOXT AC kicks off at boxt.co.uk/air-conditioning, where you get a personalised quote for your home set up before you book the job. It’s essentially an online tool that asks you a series of questions, for example, the type of property you own, which room the AC is going in, how big that space is, how much sun it gets, where the unit would sit on the wall, and so on. It’s not overly technical, and everything’s explained with diagrams and pop-up help boxes, which actually makes the process feel super easy. You’re basically building a tailored installation package without needing to speak to anyone if you don’t want to (which always suits me down to the ground).
In my case, I wanted the unit installed in my bedroom - the hottest part of the house in summer - on an external wall on the first floor. The outdoor unit needed to go quite high up the side of the house, too, since my lower wall space is already packed with a gate, raised beds, sheds and a drive. That meant scaffolding was required, which added an extra £450 (a service BOXT has to outsource).
Not ideal, but the cost was clearly explained upfront, with full breakdowns shown in the quote so you don’t get any surprises later down the line. You’re given various AC options to choose from before confirming the order, and how many rooms you’d like the unit to cover. I opted just for the one, which cost £2,200 plus the £450 scaffolding costs, totalling £2850, but then there’s currently a sale on that saves you £250 on all air conditioning orders when using code ‘AC250’, making a total of £2600. Full transparency: my order was covered by BOXT as part of my independent, editorial review here on T3.
Once everything was confirmed, I downloaded the BOXT app, where I added my order number so everything could be tracked. The last task for me here was to upload images of where in my house I would like both the inside and outside AC units installed, as well as snaps of my electrical box. There’s a tech team that reviews all this in the background before the job is confirmed to avoid any surprises on the day.
In total, it took me about 15 minutes to complete the order and send over the required photos – something you could easily knock out during a lunch break. It was a breeze but I also found it refreshing having the option to book the install on a day that suited me. I could have had it done the next day if I’d been in a rush, but this would have incurred an additional 'last minute' cost of £200, so I opted for the following week, right before the next heatwave was due to arrive. Everything up to that point had been surprisingly smooth, so I was curious to see if the actual install would be the same.
Installation: Fast and hiccup-free
I’ve had my fair share of jobs done around the house over the years that proved to be anything but smooth, so I was pretty dubious when the AC install day rolled around. How BOXT operates is that they locate and connect trusted, local tradesmen in your area to you to carry out the works, so you don’t know who’s going to turn up until the day. Concerned about the number of working parts involved, I figured something was bound to go wrong. That said, I was pretty impressed with how coordinated the whole thing was.
At 7:30am, a courier arrived to drop off the air con kit, which consisted of the indoor and outdoor Bosch Climate 3000i 3.5kw units, all the pipework, the brackets, cables and bits needed for the job. Nothing was missing, and all of it arrived together in clearly labelled boxes. Less than 15 minutes later, the air con engineer turned up to walk me through the install. He asked where I wanted the units, offered a few tweaks to improve the layout and airflow, and then started unloading and prepping. The whole vibe was calm and when I was a little worried at the huge hole he’d be drilling into the side of the house, he put me at ease by saying “don’t worry, I wouldn’t do anything to your house that I wouldn’t do to my own”.
The scaffolding crew followed shortly after at about 8am and they had the whole structure up at the side of my house in about 15 minutes – seriously fast, especially considering it was a three-man job involving poles, clamps and boards. I was expecting that part to be the biggest time consumer, but it barely made a dent in the day.
By 8:30am, the engineer was already drilling the access point through the wall, feeding through the pipework and securing the indoor unit in the bedroom. We’d agreed to place the AC high up on an external wall, almost directly behind where the outdoor unit would sit, which he said was ideal as it made the connection neater and avoided long pipe runs. He even boxed in the pipework flush to the wall with a clean, white trunking setup, meaning no ugly coils or mess.
Once both units were in place, the electrician arrived around 10am to connect it all up to the mains. It was all very tidy and, impressively, completely cable-free in terms of what was visible indoors. By 11am, the engineer had finished all the final checks, talked me through how the air con worked, drilled my remote control holder on my wall and tested the system. Job done. And at the end, they cleaned up everything – took away the boxes, dusted up the offcuts, and made sure I was happy before heading off.
The whole thing – from the first knock at the door to the job being fully signed off – took about three and a half hours. Which, considering this was a full-fixed system with scaffolding and multiple tradies involved, is pretty incredible. The only small quibble I have is that the scaffolding company took another four days to come take the scaffolding down, but that was no fault of BOXT and when I reached out to them to complain, they contacted the company immediately to get it removed.
Installing air con: The Final Result
Now that everything’s in, I can honestly say the finished setup looks – and performs – way better than I was expecting.
The indoor unit fits the room perfectly. It’s mounted high on the wall in my bedroom, wedged between my long top window and ceiling beam, to the right of my bed. And the way the installer boxed in the pipework means there are no messy cables, no dangling wires – just a clean, minimal rectangle that blends in with everything. It's not something you'd call ‘stylish’, exactly, but I wouldn’t say it feels out of place either. After a couple of days, I’d forgotten what the room looked like without it.
From the outside, the external unit is a bit more noticeable. I was expecting it to be a bit of an eyesore, but it’s not as intrusive as I thought it’d be. It’s no worse than having a satellite dish or a wall-mounted security light - just one of those things you stop seeing after a while.
Performance-wise, though, is where it really shines. On the coldest setting, the AC turns the bedroom to Arctic in less than 10 minutes. You can feel the temperature drop almost instantly – and not just in the direct line of fire, but across the whole room. It’s also really quiet. At night, I’ve been running it on the lower fan settings, and it barely makes a sound. It’s definitely much quieter than I was expecting.
What’s surprised me most, however, is how far the cool air travels. If I leave the bedroom door open, within an hour or so it cools the entire landing. I’ve experimented with keeping all the upstairs doors open and the windows shut, and after a couple of hours the entire top floor is comfortably chilled – and you can even feel the cool air creeping down the stairs.
Where I used to dread walking up to the top landing in summer – especially during a heatwave – now it actually feels cooler when you hit the top step. That horrible wave of stuffy heat that used to smack you in the face is long gone, thankfully. I mean, it’s going to cost me electricity, but I won’t know just how much until my next bill comes. This is something I’ll update the article with later down the line.
Nevertheless, when it comes to sleeping, the AC been a total game-changer so far. After closing the windows, I switch the unit on at its most powerful fan speed and at the coldest setting of 16-degrees about 20 minutes before bedtime. The room cools down quickly and then before getting into bed, I dial up the AC unit temp to a more comfortable 24-degrees-or-so, and keep it there on a lower fan speed of about 20 percent, and it stays cool throughout the night.
So far, this AC has honestly been one of the most worthwhile upgrades I’ve made to the house. The fact the whole install process took half a day, barely caused any disruption, and works this well makes me wonder why I didn’t do it years ago. And with the way UK summers are going, I have no doubt it’ll prove its worth for years to come.
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