Aircon Dripping Water? 6 Causes and What the Fix Costs

It’s a Tuesday night in your Bishan flat, the bedroom aircon has been on 2 hours, and there’s a line of water running down the wall below it. Not a drip — a steady trickle, and the paint has gone dark. The unit is still blowing cold, so nothing seems broken, which somehow makes it worse.

Why Is My Aircon Dripping Water?

Most of the time it is a choked drainage pipe. Your aircon does not just cool air, it dries it — pulling litres of moisture out of a humid Singapore flat every day. That water collects in a drip tray and runs outside through a drain pipe. When the pipe silts up with dust and grime, the water fills the tray and spills into your room instead.

That is the first thing a technician checks, but not the only cause:

What’s happening	What you’d notice	Who fixes it
Choked drainage pipe	Steady dripping from one end of the unit, worse the longer it runs	Technician
Dirty filters, frosted coil	Weak airflow, ice on the fins, water once the ice melts	Wash the filters; ice needs a visit
Drip tray full or misaligned	Pooling under one side, often only in humid weather	Technician
Loose or tilted indoor unit	Drips from one corner, often soon after installation	Technician
Low refrigerant gas	Cooling has dropped off as well as the dripping	Technician — never DIY
Condensation on bare pipework	Wet patch on the pipe run, away from the unit	Technician

The 5th row overlaps with a different fault. If the room has stopped getting properly cold as well as leaking, read why an aircon stops cooling — low gas presents both ways, and that changes what needs doing.

What Should You Do the Moment You See Water?

Switch the aircon off, at the remote and at the wall. A unit that keeps running keeps producing condensation, and every extra litre goes into your wall rather than outside. Then, in order:

1. Dry the wall and floor. Wipe it rather than leaving a towel to sit — damp fabric against plaster does its own damage. 2. Note where the water comes from. One corner, or the whole length of the unit? It is the most useful thing you can tell a technician in advance. 3. Check the drain pipe outside, if you can see it from your own window. A dry pipe while water pours indoors is a choke, confirmed.

What not to do is put a bucket under it and carry on. Ceiling board holds water for weeks, and mould costs far more than a choke.

What Can You Safely Check Yourself?

Wash the filters. The front cover of a split unit lifts open and the filters slide out — no tools, nothing to disconnect. Rinse, dry properly, slide back. Dirty filters restrict airflow, and restricted airflow is what lets a coil frost over and then drip. If your unit has run for months without a filter clean, that is worth 10 minutes before you book anyone.

Now the honest boundary. Stop at these:

• Opening the casing. Live electrical work behind it, and a coil that damages easily.
• Clearing the drain pipe. People push wire down it and puncture the pipe inside the wall — that turns a S$60 repair into a hacking job.
• Anything to do with the gas. Refrigerant is pressurised and regulated.
• The outdoor condenser. At height, outside a window, and live.
• A leak that returns after a clean. That is a fault, not dirt.

What Does It Cost to Fix an Aircon Leaking Water in Singapore?

Urban Company’s aircon water-leakage repair costs S$60 and takes about 60 minutes. That is the published price, not a figure that doubles once someone is standing in your bedroom, and the same figure covers the other common faults — poor cooling, power problems and unexplained noise.

Worth being precise about how the visit fee works: the S$60 is a visit fee replaced with the valid service cost. If the fix is the water-leakage repair, the S$60 is the job — not a diagnosis charge with a repair charge on top. If your unit turns out to need a different service, you pay that service instead. What to push back on elsewhere is the opposite structure: a call-out fee that survives the repair, or a “from” price quoted before anyone has looked at the drain.

Can Servicing Stop It Happening Again?

A drainage choke builds up gradually, so keeping the system clean is the standard way to stay ahead of it. It is maintenance, not a cure — if the unit is leaking today, get the repair first.

The interval matters more than the plan. A unit that runs most nights in a Singapore bedroom collects dust along the drain path far faster than one used a few weeks a year, and it is that path, not the coil, which eventually chokes. So the useful question is how often the units you actually use get cleaned — not which package carries the lowest headline number.

Servicing is priced per unit and the per-unit rate falls as you add units, so a 4-bedroom flat pays less per unit than a 1-bedroom. FoamJet servicing starts at S$46 for 2 units (S$23 per unit), and the S$20-per-unit rate begins at 3 units. Annual plans bundle 2, 3 or 4 visits a year. For current prices by unit count and what each servicing type includes, see our guide to aircon servicing costs in Singapore or the aircon page itself.

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Urban Company’s aircon service in Singapore holds a 4.88 rating across 24,984 reviews and 121,000 bookings, and every technician is background-verified. You book an aircon repair in Singapore in the app — the price you see is the price you pay. If the fault is actually electrical rather than the aircon itself, book an electrician; for everything else around the home, there’s a handyman too.

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