The bolted steel cages keep condensers and their copper on site without starving the unit of air, and a hinged door means servicing stays a normal job.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Airzone, the Johannesburg company that designs and installs zoned ducted air-conditioning for homes and offices, now makes and fits security cages for aircon outdoor units (https://airzone.co.za/systems/outdoor-unit-security-cage) on new and existing systems across Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The outdoor unit is usually the most valuable part of an installation left exposed. Its coil is copper and aluminium, the pipes feeding it are copper, and on a ducted system the condenser is a large share of the job cost. Airzone’s service teams regularly get calls from clients who found their unit cut loose overnight, or the pipes hacked off at the wall and the gas gone. Replacing the condenser is only part of that bill. The pipe run is renewed, the indoor unit may need flushing and the system has to be regassed and recommissioned, while the house or office goes without cooling.
Each cage is built to the size of the unit and the space around it. The frame is welded steel tube with welded anti-climb mesh panels, hot-dip galvanised and then powder-coated in charcoal. It is anchored into the concrete plinth with tamper-resistant fixings on the inside, and a full-width hinged door on the service side takes a closed-shackle padlock, so a technician can take the fan panel off without unbolting anything. Bracket-mounted units get a box cage bolted back into the wall, and where several condensers share a plinth Airzone builds one long cage with a door per unit. A lockable steel cover for the pipe trunking, up the wall to about 2.4 m, is quoted with most cages because the copper pipe is often what gets cut first.
“A cage that’s too tight costs you in electricity every summer,” said Airzone’s installations manager. “If the mesh is too fine, or someone wraps it in shade cloth to hide it, the condenser ends up breathing its own hot air. On a 34°C afternoon in Pretoria that’s when units trip. So we measure the unit and the space before anything gets cut, we follow the maker’s clearance figures for that model, and we never put a solid lid on a unit that blows out the top.”
Coil sides normally get 150 mm to 300 mm of space inside the cage and the fan face is kept open. For side-discharge units on the Highveld a sloped mesh hail guard can be added on top. Most cages are made within seven to ten working days of measuring and take two to three hours per unit to fit, and the system can usually keep running during the work.
Owners who want a quote are asked for front and side photos of the outdoor unit, its rough width, depth and height, whether it stands on the ground, a plinth or a wall bracket, and how far the pipes run up the wall. Existing clients can have a cage fitted during a seasonal service visit, when the technician checks the unit before it is closed in.
About Airzone
Airzone (https://airzone.co.za/) has designed and installed zoned air-conditioning since 2009. From its base in Johannesburg it works on ducted systems with room-by-room dampers and smart thermostats for homes, offices, clinics and boardrooms in Johannesburg, Sandton, Randburg, Pretoria and Centurion, and handles site assessments, design, installation, servicing and upgrades. It works within the same South African trade network as equipment supplier am.co.za (https://am.co.za). Airzone is operated by Astros Marketing (Pty) Ltd, 2 Makro Place, Sunnyrock 1401.
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Author: Poppy PA from Airzone on behalf of Airzone.
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