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Premises
Retail, studios, offices, clinics and light industrial across Costa Mesa and into Santa Ana.
The roof first, and the roof itself
Each unit gets an entry: what it is, where it sits, roughly what age, the condition of the curb and the roof penetration, whether the economiser travels, the filter size it really takes, the state of the electrical connections, and what the gas section looks like.
And on a low commercial building we look at the roof deck itself. A dark, uninsulated roof over a single-storey unit is a large part of the cooling load, and in a building where the tenant is about to spend money on equipment that is worth saying before they do.
Twice a year, recorded against the unit
Before the cooling load
- Condenser coils cleaned properly rather than rinsed
- Charge verified by superheat and subcooling
- Belts, bearings and drive alignment
- Economiser dampers opened and proved to travel
- Drains cleared and float switches tested
- Electrical connections torqued, contactors inspected
Before the first cold night
- Combustion tested on gas sections, figures recorded
- Heat exchangers inspected
- Flue and combustion air checked as installed
- Defrost proved on heat pumps
- Filters replaced with ones that fit the rack
- Readings compared against spring and the drift noted
And what they cost you
The seized economiser
Free cooling from outside air, available here for a large part of the year. It is also the part that seizes, and because the unit still cools nobody notices. We open and prove them every visit.
Extract with no make-up air
A hood or a large restroom fan with nothing bringing air back holds the unit at negative pressure. The front door pulls, and the conditioned air you paid for leaves through the roof.
The unit sized for a shell
Rooftop units are often specified before anybody knows what the space will be. A unit chosen for open retail and occupied by a studio full of equipment is mismatched rather than faulty.
What we turn down
Chiller plant, building management systems on proprietary protocols, and anything that genuinely wants a controls engineer rather than a mechanical contractor. We say so at the survey rather than after the second visit, and where we can we will tell you who does take it on.
We also turn down a maintenance contract on a building we have not surveyed, and we do not quote roofing or insulation even when we have just told you that is where your money should go.