The reading answered here is temporary climate equipment hired by the day or the week, not the permanent system installed in a building, which is a different trade and not this venture. What a rental counter holds is a set of movable machines: spot coolers, portable air conditioners, chillers paired with air handlers, indirect fired heaters, dehumidifiers and air scrubbers.
Spot coolers and portable air conditioners
One to five ton units on castors that cool a defined area and duct their hot air somewhere else, usually into a ceiling void or out a window. They start around $150 a day. They cool people, a server rack or a process, and they will not cool a building, because the heat they remove has to go somewhere that is not the room.
Chillers and air handlers, the two piece system
A packaged chiller sits outside and sends chilled water down insulated hoses to air handlers placed inside. That is what gets hired when a building system fails, when a floor is being commissioned, or when a temporary space needs real capacity. It arrives on a truck, needs power and a water fill, and is normally commissioned by the supplier.
Heat and dry air
The heating side is direct fired for open shells and indirect fired where the air must stay clean. Beside them sit desiccant and refrigerant dehumidifiers, which is what actually dries a slab, a flooded floor or a space being painted. Heat raises the temperature; only the dehumidifier removes the water it releases.
Air scrubbers and negative air
A scrubber pulls room air through filters, including a HEPA rated stage, and either recirculates it or exhausts it to create negative pressure in a containment. It is climate kit only in the sense that it moves air, and it is hired for dust control on cutting and demolition work, and during remediation.
Power and ducting are the real constraints
Every one of these machines is chosen by what the site can feed it and where the air can go. A five ton cooler on a domestic circuit will trip it. A chiller wants a three phase supply and a generator if there is none. Give the yard the supply, the space and the route for the duct before asking for a machine.
Questions people ask about types of hvac systems
Can a portable air conditioner cool a whole building?
No, and trying is the most common mistake. Portable units are sized for a room, a rack or a work area, and their exhaust has to leave the conditioned space or you are just moving heat around. A whole floor or building needs the chiller and air handler arrangement, or repairing the installed system.
How is temporary climate equipment priced?
Small units go on day, week and month rates like any other machine, with delivery each way. Chillers and large air handlers are usually quoted as a package that includes transport, hoses, commissioning and sometimes a service visit, because nobody wants a customer filling a chiller loop on their own.
What size spot cooler does a server room need?
Size it against the heat the equipment is producing rather than the floor area, since a small room full of racks makes far more heat than its size suggests. The other half is where the hot exhaust goes: into a ceiling void that returns to the same room, it achieves nothing.