Energy Savings
Sustainability in business is increasingly important, and taking steps to reduce wasted HVAC consumption can be an important step forward towards attaining it. According to a range of studies, regular HVAC maintenance is proven to reduce energy costs by 15-20%. This can be achieved in several ways.
By ensuring that your HVAC equipment is running smoothly you can improve its energy efficiency and reduce energy use.
By scheduling regular maintenance, you can prolong the life of your system and prevent costly equipment failure. Also, by maintaining specific environmental conditions for equipment like telecommunications systems, you’ll ensure more efficient and effective operation.
There’s even a knock-on effect on employee productivity when staff are cooler and more comfortable, and also their equipment is less likely to fail through overheating.
By contrast, failure to maintain HVAC equipment can actually increase energy costs by anywhere from 30 to 60%, which can have a significant impact on your operations.
Scheduling Maintenance
Despite reports and news stories, the tendency of organisations is to practice reactive maintenance. That is, waiting for things to go wrong and then fixing them. Though properly scheduled predictive and preventative maintenance may appear more costly in the short term, you need to offset this against the long term energy costs of running equipment at less than optimum capacity.
Of course, even preventative maintenance – undertaking regular checks and actions to reduce the likelihood of problems – won’t stop systems failing. It’s difficult to know if your preventative maintenance is happening at the right time. However, predictive maintenance can give you valuable ongoing performance data about the state of your equipment, giving you a heads up on when a system needs fine-tuning.
You can also plan maintenance tasks on a weekly or monthly basis that in-house maintenance technicians can undertake. By regularly changing filters, for example, you can reduce wasted energy costs by up to 10%.
Replace and Save
HVAC equipment has a limited lifespan and running equipment beyond that time can lead to huge costs, in terms of energy and replacement. If your AC units and heat pumps are over 10 years old, or your furnaces or boilers are over 15 years old, then replacement with the latest energy-saving models makes energy sense and helps green your organisation. Retrofitting rooftop units, so they only draw in ventilated air when needed, is a significant way to improve your energy efficiency.
Call on the Professionals
Working with qualified professionals to schedule full building HVAC maintenance can be the most effective decision you can make. By performing regular check-ups, then advising your business on a proper planned maintenance schedule, they will help you ensure the long-term viability of your HVAC system.
Summary: Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can account for more than 40% of your facility’s energy use. By regularly scheduling full building HVAC maintenance, you can make significant energy savings, ensure the comfort of employees and maintain specific operational conditions for systems and equipment.