Air conditioners have met their match in the wave of heat and packed it in.

That's temporarily spoiled dreams of a cool retreat from days of 35-plus degrees and made one trade a big hit.

Chill-Rite director Luke Robinson reported strong demand for their repair services since Christmas.

"Most people have been organised before the hot weather but there have been many breakdowns around the town since Boxing Day as the equipment is working at its limit," he said.

Bureau forecasting  reprieve in the weather

Make a plan or suffer in extreme heat

Part of a family proud of its record of "servicing Dubbo for over 35 years", Mr Robinson offered some advice yesterday as the mercury shot up the thermometer.

"Set your air conditioning to an achievable set point such as 23 degrees," he said.

"Don't set your units to 16 degrees as it will never achieve that set point when it is 40-plus degrees outside.

"All it will do is use excessive power and it will make your unit work a lot harder than it needs to."

He also urged people to keep their air conditioners maintained and the area around the outdoor unit clean.

Their jobs underlined the importance of this measure.

His staff of 14 had mainly been called to sites that did not have a regular maintenance schedule, Mr Robinson said.

And it seemed one of two alternatives for consumers had emerged a winner at Dubbo.

Customers seemed to be leaning more towards refrigerated rather than evaporative air conditioning, Mr Robinson reported.

He attributed it to the summer period "getting more humid", which he said made a refrigerated system more suitable.

"(Customers) also realise when it comes time to sell their property or business premises it can add quite a lot of money to their sale price if they have reverse-cycle refrigerated air conditioning installed," he said.