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Noise limits for air conditioners, pumps and heat pumpsA guide by Dotto

A guide by Dotto

Noise limits for air conditioners, pumps and heat pumps

Victoria and New South Wales give these machines set hours when their noise should not reach a neighbour’s home. The ACT sets a decibel standard for each zone instead, and South Australia asks whether the noise is a nuisance.

  1. VICHours
  2. NSWHours
  3. TASHours and limits
  4. ACTDecibels
  5. SANuisance test
  6. WALimits
The desk: one channel for each place, and the kind of limit its official page describes. A stop marks a set figure, an hour or a level; South Australia’s channel has none, because its test is whether the noise is a nuisance.

An air conditioner, a pool or spa pump and a heat pump water heater are fixed machines, and the rules for their noise differ from one state to the next. Noise limits for air conditioners, pumps and heat pumps is a guide to those rules, written and published by Dotto, place by place and in each place’s own terms.

General informationDotto is not an acoustic consultant, an engineer or a noise regulator. Dotto holds no engineering registration. It does not measure, assess, test or reduce noise, and does not offer or arrange that work. This is general information, not advice. The rules belong to each state and territory, and the official pages listed at the foot of each page are where to check them.

Three ways a place can set the limit

Read across the desk at the top of this page and the channels fall into three kinds.

By the clock

Victoria’s Regulation 114, in the Environment Protection Regulations 2021, names particular sources of household noise and the times they may not be heard in the home next door. New South Wales does the same through its Noise Control Regulation 2026, which fixes the times when household noise is not to be heard inside a neighbour’s home. Tasmania’s Regulations also work by the clock, with prohibited hours for common sources that include heating and cooling devices and pumps.

By a measured level

The ACT gives each of its noise zones a standard for the day and another for the night, counted in dB(A), a decibel scale weighted to the way the human ear hears. Tasmania adds limits of this kind for fixed equipment such as heat pumps, which EPA Tasmania describes as relatively easy to measure.

By the nuisance test

In South Australia the question is whether the noise interferes unreasonably with what a person could normally expect to do, and EPA South Australia names noise from household pool pumps and air conditioners among the everyday examples councils deal with.

Place by place

  1. Victoria

    Air conditioners used for cooling sit in a group of their own in Regulation 114, separate from pool, spa and water pumps; the hours for each group are in the two machine guides. EPA Victoria’s page says it does not investigate reports of household noise, and that this is the local council’s role.

  2. New South Wales

    The NSW EPA lists air conditioners, and pool pumps or heat pump water heaters, among the noisy household equipment that a council officer or NSW Police can warn someone about when it runs during restricted times. New South Wales sets hours for air conditioners and heat pump water heaters; they are on the NSW EPA’s page.

  3. Tasmania

    EPA Tasmania’s page says the Noise Regulations are, in general, put into effect by local government and Tasmania Police. The page says heating and cooling devices have prohibited hours under the Regulations but does not list them, so this guide holds no Tasmanian hours for those machines.

  4. Australian Capital Territory

    Access Canberra bases the noise zones on the zoning in the Territory Plan, and names the Environment Protection Authority as the body that administers the territory’s noise Act and Regulation. The residential figures, and the lower limit for units and townhouses, are in the ACT guide.

  5. South Australia

    Councils deal with local nuisance under South Australia’s Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act 2016, and complaints about neighbourhood nuisance go to the council.

  6. Western Australia

    The state’s noise rules are the Environmental Protection (Noise) Regulations 1997, which operate as a prescribed standard and set limits on noise emissions. The department deals with industries that are prescribed premises, while local governments apply the Regulations to household, commercial and general industry noise; noisy parties are a matter for police, under the Act’s provisions on unreasonable noise rather than the Regulations. That is the department’s page as last updated on 13 November 2023. This guide holds none of the Regulations’ figures.

Queensland and the Northern Territory are outside this guide: the official sources behind it hold nothing for them.

The four guides

  1. Channel 1Air conditioner noise hours in VictoriaCooling and heating in Victoria’s two groups, and the heat health warning exception with its limit.
  2. Channel 2Pool pumps, heaters and heat pump water heatersWhich row each machine sits in, the two exclusions in the fine print, and what follows a warning in NSW.
  3. Channel 3ACT noise zones and the decibel limit for a homeThe residential zone’s day and night standards, the lower limit for units and townhouses, and what may go above it.
  4. Channel 4Fixed machine noise in South Australia, Tasmania and Western AustraliaA nuisance test, emission limits and limits in the Regulations: three places that print no hours for these machines.

Reading an official page about noise

Three of the pages this guide draws on carry a date, and the date belongs with every figure taken from them: EPA Victoria’s residential noise page was updated on 23 May 2025, the NSW EPA’s neighbourhood noise page on 31 August 2026, and the Western Australian page on 13 November 2023. Where a guide gives an hour or a level from one of them, it gives it as at that date. Access Canberra’s page carries no date, so its figures are given as the page stood when it was read on 9 October 2026.