For property management, repairs and maintenance are a big part of the job. These protect the value of the community and help keep residents satisfied. This includes preventative maintenance for HVAC. With these systems, routine care is more cost effective than replacement and repair. It also makes your units more energy efficient, keeping your residents happier by helping their energy bills stay under control.
Cleaning HVAC evaporator coils should be a part of your planned preventive maintenance schedule for buildings. At Maintenance Heroes a division of Occupancy Heroes Incorporated, we offer HVAC coil cleaning services as one of the types of building maintenance on our Maintenance Hero list of services. Our HVAC certified Heroes can clean and repair your community’s systems thoroughly from the inside out, saving you time, manpower, frustration, and expense. Plus, we can get the work done without disrupting your team, your residents, and your day.
Is Your HVAC Maintenance Plan Enough?
Many property managers recognize the need for HVAC maintenance and may have some form of it on their checklist. The issue is that they may not be aware of what it entails. Missing items on your preventive maintenance list can lead to major problems over time. Some attempt to resolve this dilemma by entrusting such matters to their in-house maintenance team. Others hire HVAC maintenance specialists to manage all things regarding these systems. These efforts are often not enough.
Within just the past decade hiring maintenance workers has become increasingly difficult. The rich pool of skilled labor there once was is now retiring and there are few replacements. Those filling apartment maintenance jobs often lack the skill and experience required to do quality work in HVAC maintenance. Property managers face steep competition in hiring maintenance staff, forcing many to settle for the best they can get. The gap in skills often leads to gaps in proper preventative property maintenance, ultimately resulting in lost dollars.
It used to be that apartment managers could turn to displaced construction workers to fill property maintenance positions. According to the National Apartment Association, 2.3 million employees left the construction industry between 2006 and 2011, but a recent boom in development has driven them back to work (1). Now even contractors are suffering from a lack of labor. Complicating the challenge of hiring maintenance employees is the inability to check with past employers or test for mechanical skills (2). HVAC companies make the matter worse, competing with property managers for skilled talent and offering higher wages (1).
One exit for property managers is to leave their HVAC maintenance to the HVAC professionals, making use of the same talent without competing. Though it can resolve some of the challenges, many HVAC companies don’t include condenser coil cleaning in their annual maintenance services. Also, these specialists are specialized and cannot cover any other aspect of maintaining the property. This leaves property managers making a lot of phone calls and spending far more on routine maintenance than they should have to.
The Benefits of Clean HVAC Coils
Though many skip over cleaning the HVAC condenser coils when performing annual maintenance, it’s a very important part of keeping the systems in good operating condition. Clean HVAC coils protect energy efficiency and can extend the life of the unit. When these coils become caked in dust and dirt it lowers the system’s ability to transfer energy, causing it to work harder and longer to cool a space. It subjects the system to more breakdowns, speeding the need for replacement and driving up residents’ energy costs.
HVAC coil cleaning has to be done carefully and with the right equipment. You wouldn’t want your preventative maintenance to lead to more problems. That’s why the HVAC certified Heroes at Maintenance Heroes uses only the best tools, techniques, and supplies when servicing your property’s units. We not only maintain but also repair, providing property management detailed reports on the condition of each HVAC system.
Stepping Up Your Preventative Maintenance for Apartments
The purpose of preventive maintenance is to save your residents from the hassle and your property from the expense of major repair issues. Keeping an on-property maintenance team that can do a great job in covering all aspects of preventative maintenance keeps getting harder. Cleaning HVAC coils is one of the tasks that often go undone and overlooked, but it’s extremely important. Instead of handing this job to an HVAC company that can only handle this one aspect of maintenance, consider building a relationship with Maintenance Heroes a division of Occupancy Heroes Incorporated. Use not only our HVAC coil cleaning services but our comprehensive portfolio of offerings to maintain, improve, promote, and fill your rental community.
Resources:
1. https://www.naahq.org/news-publications/finding-solutions-maintenance-quandary
2. http://www.nchm.org/Resources/Operation-Insights/Review/ArticleId/147/Test-article