A one-off UPS service is $720 ex GST per unit in metro Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and includes battery impedance testing, a thermographic scan of terminations under load, transfer testing, firmware checks and a written report with measured values.

A standard annual maintenance plan is $1,940 ex GST per year, covering scheduled visits, operational testing, calibration, priority fault response and an annual compliance report. Critical care plans with 24/7 response to an agreed SLA are quoted after consultation.

Multi-unit sites and multi-site fleets are quoted individually, with the per-unit rate falling as unit count rises. Regional and remote sites attract a mobilisation charge, which is why we combine nearby sites into one visit wherever possible. Full detail on UPS maintenance plans.

For a designed and commissioned room in Australia, budget roughly $8,000 to $15,000 for a small comms room on a single split or wall-mounted precision unit, $25,000 to $45,000 for a mid-size server room with redundancy, and $45,000 to $60,000 and above for a larger room or a data hall with multiple units and containment.

The variables that move that number most are redundancy (N or N+1), whether the condenser can be sited near the room or needs a long pipe run and crane access, and whether the electrical supply can carry the new load without a switchboard upgrade. The unit itself is rarely the expensive part.

The cheapest possible mistake is sizing on nameplate ratings instead of measured load, which routinely produces double the cooling a room needs and a unit that short cycles because of it. See server room cooling.

Battery replacement is quoted on assessment rather than from a list, because the number is driven by four things: the chemistry (VRLA, AGM or lithium-ion), how many blocks are in the string, whether the cabinet or rack can be reused, and whether the old batteries need collection and recycling.

What we will not do is quote a replacement without testing first. Impedance testing tells you whether the whole string genuinely needs replacing or whether a small number of failing blocks are dragging the string down, and those are very different invoices. On a fleet, testing usually pays for itself by identifying which units can safely wait another year.

For a working estimate before you call, use the battery replacement cost calculator. See also battery maintenance and replacement.

The unit itself is rarely the number that decides the project. Precision cooling units sold in Australia range from a few thousand dollars for a small wall-mounted or rack-mounted unit through to the high tens of thousands for a large floor-standing CRAC with redundancy, and quoting a single figure for "a CRAC unit" is close to meaningless without the capacity and the configuration.

The installed cost is the useful number, and for a designed and commissioned room that runs roughly $8,000 to $15,000 for a small comms room, $25,000 to $45,000 mid-size, and $45,000 to $60,000 and above for a data hall. Condenser siting, pipe runs, crane access and whether the switchboard can carry the load routinely cost more than the unit.

Send us the room size, the IT load in kW and a photo of the space and we will quote the installed number rather than the sticker price. See CRAC installation.

At least once a year for single-phase systems, and twice a year for three-phase or mission-critical installations. That is the manufacturer minimum and the interval most warranties are written against.

A professional service covers battery impedance testing, thermographic imaging of connections, transfer and bypass testing, firmware checks, fan and capacitor condition, and cleaning. Between visits, monthly visual checks of alarms, ventilation and ambient temperature are worth doing in house.

Sites in healthcare, data centres, defence, banking and mining are usually on a more frequent schedule under their own compliance framework rather than the manufacturer's. See UPS maintenance.

Quarterly professional servicing for anything supporting critical infrastructure, with monthly or bi-monthly in-house checks on filters, condensate pumps and alarms. The annual visit adds electrical inspection with a thermographic scan, full coil cleaning inside and out, compressor performance testing and a complete diagnostic review.

Queensland, Northern Territory and northern Western Australian sites should complete the annual comprehensive service before October, so the condenser is clean going into summer rather than being cleaned in response to a high pressure trip. Coastal and dusty industrial sites need the condenser washed more often than annually.

Refrigerant work must be carried out under ARCtick licence. See CRAC maintenance.

A CRAC unit, or computer room air conditioner, is a precision cooling system designed for data centres, server rooms and telecommunications facilities. Unlike comfort air conditioning built for people, a CRAC unit runs continuously, handles concentrated heat loads, and holds strict temperature and humidity tolerances.

It keeps IT equipment inside the ASHRAE recommended envelope of 18 to 27 degrees Celsius at the rack inlet, holds relative humidity in a controlled band to prevent both static discharge and condensation, is engineered for a high sensible heat ratio because electronics produce dry heat rather than moisture, and continuously filters dust out of the air.

Configurations are downflow, which discharges cold air into a raised floor plenum, and upflow, which discharges upward into the room for spaces without a raised floor.

A CRAC unit contains its own refrigerant circuit and compressor, and rejects heat through an outdoor condenser. It is self contained: no chiller, no central plant, and one unit failing does not take the room with it.

A CRAH unit, computer room air handler, has no compressor. It passes room air over a chilled water coil fed from a central chiller plant. It is more efficient at scale and quieter in the room, but plant failure affects every unit at once and it brings water treatment obligations with it.

They look nearly identical from the front, which is why the distinction is missed so often. The quickest test is whether there is refrigerant pipework to an outdoor condenser or chilled water pipework to a plant room. We service both, plus condenser water units. See DX servicing and CHW and CRAH maintenance.

Around 15 to 20 years with proper maintenance, and considerably less without it. Units on coastal sites corrode faster because salt attacks fins, fasteners and casing, and fin erosion permanently reduces heat transfer area in a way cleaning cannot recover.

The decision to repair or replace usually turns on the refrigerant rather than the mechanics. Australia is progressively reducing the volume of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerant that can be imported, so an older unit running a high global warming potential blend, with a slow leak and an ageing compressor, eventually reaches a point where recharging it is no longer cheap.

We record refrigerant type and charge at every visit and flag which units would be expensive to recharge, so the replacement decision lands in a budget cycle rather than during a failure.

The ASHRAE recommended envelope is 18 to 27 degrees Celsius measured at the rack inlet, not at the wall thermostat and not at the return air grille. Where you measure changes the answer, and rack inlet is the only reading that reflects what the equipment actually experiences.

Running colder than this does not make equipment safer, it just costs more to run. The more useful measurement is the spread from the top of the rack face to the bottom. A wide spread is an airflow and containment problem, and adding cooling capacity will not fix it, it will simply cost money for nothing.

Relative humidity matters as well. Too dry risks static discharge, too wet risks condensation and corrosion.

Faster than most people expect. A room full of IT equipment with the cooling stopped can climb past safe operating temperature within minutes, because there is nowhere for concentrated heat to go. Servers begin thermal throttling first, then shut down to protect themselves, and equipment that runs hot repeatedly without ever tripping still has its service life shortened.

The slower damage is the expensive one. Sustained warm running degrades UPS batteries badly, and a room running five degrees warm will take years off a battery string. That cost arrives disguised as an early battery replacement rather than as a cooling fault, so the two are rarely connected.

Excess heat in a battery room is also a fire risk, which is why temperature alarming that reaches someone who still works there matters more than the alarm existing at all.

Typically 3 to 5 years for VRLA batteries and longer for lithium-ion, against a UPS unit life of 8 to 12 years. Batteries are almost always the first thing to need replacing.

Temperature is the dominant factor, well ahead of cycle count for most Australian sites. Every sustained increase above the rated ambient shortens life measurably, which is the practical reason UPS and cooling should be specified together rather than as separate trades.

Impedance testing at each service catches a failing string years before it fails under load, which matters because a UPS with a degraded battery gives no warning until the day it is needed. Estimate a replacement with the battery replacement cost calculator.

They solve different problems and neither substitutes for the other. A UPS transfers to battery in milliseconds, so connected equipment never sees the interruption. A generator takes seconds to start and come up to load, by which time unprotected servers have already dropped.

The UPS covers the gap. Runtime is deliberately short, often 5 to 15 minutes, which is enough to ride out a brief outage or to hold the load until a generator picks it up. A UPS also corrects brownouts, surges and voltage variation that a generator does nothing about.

On sites without a generator, the UPS runtime needs to cover a controlled shutdown instead. That is a sizing decision, not a product decision. Start with the UPS runtime and battery calculator.

Electrical work on a UPS is licensed electrical work and must be carried out by a licensed electrician. Handling refrigerant in a CRAC unit requires an ARCtick licence issued under the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Regulations, and it is an offence to work on a refrigerant circuit without one.

Installations should be completed to Australian Standards including AS/NZS 3000 for electrical installations and AS IEC 62040 for uninterruptible power systems.

A contractor should be able to produce both licences plus the refrigerant charge record for your system. Ask for them before the first visit rather than after. Indigi holds both, and is an Indigenous and Veteran-owned business registered with Supply Nation and listed on ICN Gateway.