Your Cart is Empty
Free delivery to homes and businesses throughout greater sydney & southern highlands. Learn more
Free delivery to homes and businesses throughout greater sydney & southern highlands. Learn more
Most offices choose an office water cooler the way they choose a kettle. Someone finds a photo they like, checks the price, orders it. Six months later it's sitting in an awkward corner, nobody has ever used the hot tap, and someone is still carting bottles up from the storeroom.
It doesn't need to go that way. There are really only five questions here, and none of them are complicated. Answer them properly and the cooler just quietly does its job, which is all you want from it. Here's how to work through them.
Before you look at a single product, work out your volume. That one number shapes everything else.
For a sense of scale, the National Health and Medical Research Council's Eat for Health guidance suggests adults need around 2.6 litres of fluid a day for men and 2.1 litres for women, counting tea, coffee and everything else, not just water. Nobody drinks all of that at work, but it's a useful starting point.
Here's the quick version. Allow one to one and a half litres per person per day from the cooler. A 15L bottle is about 60 cups. So a team of ten will get through roughly a bottle a day, and an office of twenty-five needs a proper delivery schedule rather than someone ducking out to the shops.
This is where offices get caught out, because the weekly average hides the problem.
Office attendance has firmed up but it's still uneven. A survey of 500 Australian employers by recruitment firm Robert Half found businesses now ask for about three and a half days in the office on average, and 39% want their people in five days a week. In most offices that means Tuesday and Wednesday are packed and Friday is quiet.
So plan around your big days. Nobody remembers the quiet ones when the bottle runs dry at 2pm on a Wednesday.
Everything else follows from this one, so it's worth a minute.
A bottled cooler stands on its own. It needs a power point and nothing else, you can put it wherever you like, and the water turns up ready to drink. You choose the water, and you can move the cooler without calling a plumber.
A plumbed system connects to your mains and filters the town water as it comes through. There are no bottles to store or lift, no deliveries to think about, and no real limit on how much you use.
Neither one wins outright. Bottled suits offices that want a particular water, have somewhere to keep spares, and like being able to put the cooler anywhere. Plumbed suits busy sites, small kitchens, and teams who would rather not handle bottles at all. Our plumbed filtration systems start at $54.50 a month to hire, and plenty of offices run both: a plumbed unit by the kitchen sink and a bottled cooler in the boardroom.
This one is simply about space.
Freestanding units suit kitchens, break rooms and hallways where you have floor space and the cooler will be the main spot people go to. Benchtop units suit offices where the bench is free but the floor isn't, and they're handy in reception, small meeting rooms, or as a second point on another floor.
Both our benchtop and freestanding coolers start at $132 a year to hire, with four 15L bottles included. So this is a decision about where it will live, not what it costs.
Here's the one people wish they'd thought about earlier, and it comes down to a single question: who's lifting the bottle?
A full 15L bottle weighs about 15 kilos. With a top-loading cooler, someone has to lift that to shoulder height and turn it upside down. With a bottom-loading one, the bottle slides into a cabinet at floor level and a pump does the work.
If anyone on your team would find that lift difficult, or you'd simply rather nobody tried, bottom-loading is worth it. Our bottom-loaded models start at $176 a year to hire, compared with $132 for the standard unit. That's about $44 a year to take the lifting out of the office altogether, which most managers find is money well spent.
Most offices tick hot and cold without thinking about it, and for plenty of workplaces that's the right call. It covers tea, coffee, instant soup, and not having to wait for the kettle.
But cool and cold is there for a reason. If you've got kids on site, visitors who help themselves, a reception area or a waiting room, taking the boiling tap out of the equation takes a burn risk with it. Both options start at the same price as ours, so it's a question of what suits your space rather than what you can afford.
A cooler can be exactly right on paper and still get ignored if it's annoying to use. A few details are worth sorting when you order:
Where it goes. Put it where people already walk. A cooler tucked in a corner nobody passes gets used far less than one on the way to the kitchen or the printer.
A cup holder. It's $22 a year on our hire plans and saves a trip to the cupboard every single time. Small things, big differences.
A bottle rack or stand. Keep your spares tidy and off the floor, which matters more in a shared kitchen than you'd think.
The drip tray. Someone has to empty it. Make sure they can actually reach it.
How often water arrives. We deliver fortnightly, monthly or as a one-off. Match it to what your team really drinks, not what you hope they drink.
Who cleans it, and how often? A water cooler sits in a warm room and everyone touches it, so it needs regular attention. On our hire plans that's scheduled rather than remembered. We replace the filters, clean and sanitise the cooler inside and out, replace the top, drip tray and taps, then date and sign the service sticker and send you written confirmation for your workplace safety records. That last bit quietly saves an office manager a job, because the paperwork takes care of itself.
What happens if you move? On our hire plans, moving the cooler is free, whether that's across the office or across the city. Plenty of Sydney businesses have shifted premises lately, so it's not a theoretical perk. And if you're still weighing up whether to hire a water cooler or buy one outright, we've looked at that decision in its own article.
Worth remembering through all of this: the cooler is just the dispenser. The water is the actual product.
You can pick the perfect unit, in the perfect spot, cleaned on schedule, and still not know what's in the glass. That's worth a thought, because PFAS have been in the news a fair bit. They're man-made chemicals used to make things resist heat, grease and water, found in everything from non-stick pans to firefighting foam, and they're often called "forever chemicals" because they break down very slowly. In June 2025 the NHMRC tightened the PFAS limits in the Australian drinking water guidelines, cutting the figure for one of the main ones from 70 down to 8, in units so small they're measured in parts per trillion.
Novo spring water comes from a single spring in the Peats Ridge area north of Sydney, filtered naturally through sandstone on its way down. It's independently tested, and no PFAS were found, right down to the smallest amount the lab can measure. Because it comes from one source rather than a blend of several, that test describes the exact water going into your bottle.
So whichever cooler you land on, ask the same question about the water. Any supplier worth dealing with will send you their latest test results without hesitating.
Choosing an office water cooler comes down to five things: how much your team really drinks, bottled or plumbed, freestanding or benchtop, top or bottom loading, and whether you want a boiling tap. Sort those, add a delivery schedule that matches reality and a supplier who looks after what they supply, and you're done.
Then ask the question most offices skip: what's actually in the water you've just arranged to drink every day for the next few years?
Not sure what suits your office? Give the Novo Water team a call on 02 9764 2444 or get in touch online. Tell us your headcount, your kitchen layout and your busiest day, and we'll suggest a setup rather than send you a catalogue. Free delivery across Greater Sydney and the Southern Highlands, and no lock-in contracts.
Water is essential. Knowing what's in yours should be too.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
