How much does it cost for an air conditioner to be installed?

In 2026, having an air conditioner installed in the Algarve has no list price. The unit has a shop price; the installation does not, because it is work done in one particular house, and Handyman Algarve quotes it from the lines of that job: the unit sized for the room, the refrigerant pipes to the outdoor unit, where that unit goes and how it is reached, the drain for the water it makes, the electrical supply and the making good. Those lines set the price, which is why a figure borrowed from another house misleads.

On grants, as at September 2026: the Fundo Ambiental has no open application window for insulation, windows, heat pumps or solar in a private home, and the home energy-efficiency loan created by Portaria n.º 442-A/2025/1, managed by Banco Português de Fomento, had no rates, ceilings or application window published.

How much does it cost to install AC in my house?

It is the sum of the lines of the job, and a complete quote writes each one down separately:

1. The unit. The indoor and outdoor units and the remote, with the make, the model and the capacity written, and the energy label and the technical sheet with them.
2. The refrigerant pipe run. The insulated refrigerant pipes and the cable between the indoor and outdoor units, the hole through the wall, the trunking or the chase that carries them, and extra refrigerant where the run is longer than the unit’s factory charge covers.
3. Connecting and starting it. Joining the refrigerant pipes on site, which is certified work, then testing the circuit for leaks, emptying it of air and moisture with a vacuum pump, releasing the refrigerant and the first start.
4. The outdoor unit’s position. The wall bracket, the ground base or the roof mount, the anti-vibration mounts, and the scaffold or platform when the unit sits high.
5. The condensate drain. The pipe that takes the water from the indoor unit to a drain, and a small pump where it cannot fall there.
6. The electrical work. The circuit, its protection on the board and any change to the contracted power.
7. Taking out an old unit. Recovering its refrigerant first, which is certified work too, then removing the unit and taking it away.
8. The making good. Holes sealed, chases filled and painted, trunking fitted.

Two quotes for the same unit can differ in every line after the first, and those are the lines to compare. A missing line is not a free one: ask whether it is included or left to someone else, and whether the total includes IVA, the Portuguese VAT.

How is the size of the unit chosen?

From a heat-load calculation for the room: how much heat comes into it on a hot day, and so how much the unit has to take out. The calculation takes in:

• The floor area and the ceiling height, which together give the volume of air to cool.
• The orientation and the sun on the glass. Large windows facing the afternoon sun let in more heat than small ones in shade.
• The insulation of the walls and the roof, and the glazing.
• A top floor under the roof, which takes the sun’s heat from above.
• The people and the appliances in the room, since both give off heat.

The place is an input too, because the calculation is made for the local summer, and summers differ along the coast: IPMA’s climate normals for 1991 to 2020 count 8.5 days a year at or above 30 °C at Sagres and 51.8 at Vila Real de Santo António.

Two rooms with the same floor area can need different units, which is why this page gives no rule of so many BTU per square metre: such a rule measures the floor, not the room. A capacity may be written in kW or in BTU per hour; both measure the same thing.

Getting the size right also decides how the unit runs. An inverter unit slows its compressor as the room approaches the set temperature instead of switching on and off, so a unit sized to the room runs steadily. A unit much larger than the room needs still cycles on and off, because even at its lowest speed it takes heat out faster than the room gains it; one too small runs at full speed through the hottest afternoons and can fall short of the set temperature.

Ask for the energy label and the technical sheet with the quote. The label gives the unit’s efficiency class for cooling and, on a unit that also heats, for heating. The technical sheet gives its capacity, the electrical supply it needs, the pipe sizes and the longest pipe run the manufacturer allows.

How much does split AC installation cost?

It is the price of the indoor and outdoor units plus the work that joins them, and the work follows the house, not the box. A split air conditioner has an indoor unit in the room and an outdoor unit outside, connected by refrigerant pipes, and where more than one room is cooled, the first choice is how the rooms are served. Each option puts the work in a different place.

	Single split	Multi split	Ducted
Indoor units	One, in the room	One in each room it serves	One, hidden above a false ceiling
Outdoor units	One for each room	One for all the rooms it serves	One
Pipe runs	From the room to its own outdoor unit	From each room back to the shared outdoor unit	To the hidden unit, with ducts on to a grille in each room
If the outdoor unit stops	Only that room loses its cooling	Every room on it does	The whole system does
What weighs on the quote	Each room’s pipe run and outdoor position	The runs back to one point, and an outdoor unit sized for all its rooms	The false ceiling, the ducts and grilles, and an access hatch for maintenance

A multi split puts one outdoor unit on the wall where separate splits would put several, which helps where outside space is short, and the manufacturer sets how many indoor units and how much pipe one outdoor unit can take.

What is called central air conditioning is, in a house, a ducted system: one indoor unit above a false ceiling, with ducts to a grille in each room. It is priced on the false ceiling and the ductwork as well as the equipment, which is why it suits a renovation that opens the ceilings anyway, and control room by room needs motorised dampers in the ducts, a line of its own.

What does a pre-installation change?

A pre-installation, pré-instalação in Portuguese, is pipework laid in the walls when the building was built or renovated: the refrigerant pipes and the condensate drain, and the cable where one was laid, running between the place meant for the indoor unit and the place meant for the outdoor one. It takes the pipe run through the walls, with its chasing and making good, out of the quote, and it fixes where the units go, because the pipes end where they end.

It does not take out the certified work. Connecting a unit to a pre-installation is still joining refrigerant pipes on site, so it is done by a certified technician from a certified company. Before anything is connected, the pipes are checked, since nobody can see inside a wall: that their sizes match what the new unit’s technical sheet asks for, that the drain falls to an outlet, and that the circuit holds pressure without a leak. Where a check fails, the repair or a new run is a line of its own.

Where does the outdoor unit go, and how is it reached?

Where it has air around it, a solid fixing, and room for its noise and its water to do no harm, as close to the indoor unit as that allows. Each of those is part of the price:

• Air. The clear space around it and in front of the fan that the manufacturer’s instructions set, so it does not draw its own hot exhaust back in. A closed recess or a tight box starves it.
• Noise. The fan and the compressor run while it works, so it goes away from bedroom windows and the neighbours’ windows, on anti-vibration mounts and a solid wall or base.
• Distance. The further it sits from the indoor unit, the longer the pipe run, within the length the manufacturer allows for the model.
• Height and access. On the ground it stands on a base. On a wall bracket high up or on a roof it is work at height: lifted and fixed from scaffold or a platform, not from a ladder alone, and a roof is not a place for a homeowner to work. That access is a line of the quote.

Before an outdoor unit goes on a building held in horizontal property, propriedade horizontal, it is worth reading the deed that constitutes the horizontal property, the título constitutivo, and any condominium regulation, and asking the administrator whether the work needs the authorisation of the condominium’s assembly, the assembleia de condóminos. Whether an outdoor unit needs anything from the câmara, the municipal council, is for the câmara to say about a particular house, and when it requires paperwork, that is a line of its own in the quote.

The refrigerant circuit is never opened, joined, disconnected, recharged or moved by a homeowner, at any stage. Moving an outdoor unit that is already in place means opening and rejoining that circuit, which is certified work, and so are recharging gas and repairing a leak.

Where does the water from an air conditioner go?

To a drain, through a pipe of its own. While it cools, an air conditioner takes water out of the room’s air, and the indoor unit collects it in a tray that empties into that pipe. The pipe takes the water to a drain, never onto a path, a terrace below or a neighbour’s wall, and it needs a steady fall all the way. Where no outlet sits low enough for that fall, a small condensate pump lifts the water, and the pump is a line of its own. A reversible unit heating in winter makes its water at the outdoor unit instead, and that water needs a drain too.

Does the electrical supply need to change?

That depends on two things, both checked before a unit is chosen: the circuit that feeds it and the contracted power of the house. Where the unit needs a circuit of its own, with its protection on the board, or the board has no room for one, that work is a line of the quote.

Contracted power, the potência contratada on your electricity bill, is the size of the supply in your contract, and the rule of ERSE, the energy regulator, is to choose it by what runs at the same time, not by the sum of everything installed: the air conditioner counts alongside the oven, the water heater and whatever else is on when it runs. A household customer may ask to change the step at any time, but only up to the potência requisitada, the power the property was connected for, or the potência certificada, the power its installation is certified for, where that is lower (Regulamento de Relações Comerciais, Regulamento n.º 827/2023, article 69.º); below the maximum your installation admits, that is a request to your electricity supplier, and above it, a power-increase request to E-REDES, the distribution operator (national rules, as read in 2026).

The circuit, the board and any change to the supply are an electrician’s work, done with the power switched off at the board and confirmed off before anything is touched.

Who can install a split air conditioner?

A certified technician from a certified company. Joining the refrigerant pipes of a split air conditioner on site is “installation” under the EU regulation on fluorinated gases, Regulation (EU) 2024/573: it must be done by a certified technician and, when it is a service to a customer, by a certified company. Portugal’s own decree, Decreto-Lei n.º 145/2017, also requires the certified technician to belong to a certified company.

That is why buying a split separately does not take the installer out of the price. A shop may sell a split charged with fluorinated gas to a homeowner only with evidence that a certified company will install it, and it keeps the installer’s details for five years. In Portugal the certificates are issued by bodies accredited by IPAC, and it is reasonable to ask for the technician’s and the company’s certificate numbers before work starts.

Why is AC installation cost high?

Because the price pays for certified, skilled work on the indoor and outdoor units and the pipes between them, not for the delivery of an appliance. The installation part of a quote is carried by:

• The refrigerant work. Joining the pipes on site, which is for a certified technician from a certified company, then testing the circuit for leaks, emptying it of air and moisture and releasing the refrigerant.
• The access. An outdoor unit high on a wall or on a roof is fixed from scaffold or a platform, and reaching it safely is part of the job.
• The pipe run. Its length, the walls it crosses, the trunking or the chase that carries it, and any refrigerant added for a longer run.
• The electrical supply. A circuit of its own, room on the board and, where the load calls for it, a change of contracted power.
• The making good. Holes sealed, chases filled and painted, and trunking fitted straight.

Each of these is set by the house, which is why the same unit costs a different amount to install in two different rooms, and why a quote that shows them line by line is the one that can be checked.

What should I send for a quote?

Photos and facts you can gather from the ground, with nothing electrical taken apart:

1. The room, with its rough floor area, which way its windows face and whether it sits under the roof.
2. The inside wall where the indoor unit would go.
3. The outside, where the outdoor unit could go, photographed from the ground or a window, not from a ladder or the edge of a roof.
4. The electricity board, photographed as it is, with its door open if it has one and no cover or panel taken off.
5. The contracted power, which is on your electricity bill.
6. Any pre-installation already there: the box or the pipe ends, inside and outside.

With that set, the quote comes back free, with each line written out, in English or Portuguese. The page on air conditioning installation in the Algarve covers what the work includes and how a request is handled.