Spring Maintenance for Your Commercial HVAC Unit

Preparing your HVAC for spring and summer in the Chicago area.

Springtime is right around the corner in the greater Chicago region, and now’s the ideal time to determine your spring maintenance plan. Summer is typically the busiest time for many businesses throughout Chicago. By performing preventative maintenance on your HVAC equipment during the springtime, your business can prepare your air conditioner units for the rigors of peak load level during the summer. That way, your business doesn’t have to worry about the risk of a critical failure that results in loss of business and revenue.

Interested in what your business can do to prepare your commercial HVAC system for the rigors of summer? Here are some springtime maintenance tips to get you started.

Clean Ducts and Equipment

Dirty air ducts not only reduce indoor air quality; they can also reduce the efficiency of your air conditioning units. If you or anyone at your company experience seasonal allergies, cleaning air ducts can help mitigate adverse reactions to airborne allergens. At the same time, regularly cleaning your infrastructure prevents the growth of mold, bacteria, and buildup that can eventually require more critical HVAC repairs.

Dirty heating and cooling coils, motors, and air handling units can significantly decrease the efficiency of your system. On top of cleaning ducts, it’s well worth your time to clean air handlers, grilles, registers, fans, motors, coils, and housings while you’re at it.

Schedule Preventative Maintenance

After a long winter, your heating system has been doing all of the work. That means your cooling systems have been hibernating and sitting unused for several months now. Before starting your air conditioning system up for the season, a preventative maintenance routine can address any potential issues with your system before they become critical problems.

On top of optimizing performance, preventative maintenance help extend the lifetime of your equipment, so you can maximize your return on investment. Schedule an air conditioning maintenance appointment, and an HVAC technician will ensure your AC is ready for the summer by assessing factors like:

Refrigerant levels
Proper connections
Optimal lubrication for fans/motors
Electrical connections
Thermostat calibration

Many HVAC manufacturers also require a routine maintenance schedule for your warranty to remain valid, so scheduling spring maintenance ensures that you’ll be able to make a valid warranty claim should manufacturer defects ever arise.

Perform an Energy Audit

Did you spend more than you expected to on energy costs last year? Before the hectic rush of summer arrives, spring offers the ideal time to perform an energy audit and assess where exactly that money went last year. An energy audit helps you pinpoint what systems are consuming the most energy, so you can start planning to deploy upgrades or retrofits that save you money.

Not sure where to begin? Start with the NREL’s retrofit and efficiency database to understand which systems are ripe for energy efficiency upgrades.

Want to learn more about the measures you can take to prepare your HVAC infrastructure for the peak load demands of the summer? Contact the air conditioning experts at Air Comfort today, and we’ll work with you to build a springtime maintenance program around your needs.