As the facility manager of a building, you are legally obligated to organise regular commercial air conditioning services to maximise the air quality for the building’s occupants, workers, and guests. These obligations have been put in place so that your building’s HVAC system isn’t providing unclean air that can have harmful short- and long-term health effects on those who breathe it in.
As commercial air conditioning experts, the team at Air-rite Mechanical Services can help you ensure you’re fulfilling your responsibilities. From the laws you need to comply with, to how often you need to get various parts of your HVAC system serviced, here are your commercial air conditioning obligations as a facility manager.
Why You Need to Maintain Your HVAC System
The importance of HVAC maintenance all comes down to the need for clean indoor air quality. Ventilation is the process of fresh outside air moving into an indoor space. This is essential for all buildings so that the inside air remains clean to breath and doesn’t carry around any harmful microorganisms. One of the key functions of a HVAC system is to act as a giant mechanical ventilation system so that office buildings, restaurants, gyms and other commercial spaces are always producing safe and refreshing air.
However, just like any other piece of machinery, commercial air conditioning systems need regular maintenance in order to operate at peak efficiency. A system that isn’t well-maintained runs the risk of producing the type of unclean air that it has been designed to mitigate. As a result, occupants of buildings that have unmaintained HVAC systems may develop “Sick Building Syndrome” – an umbrella term for the myriad of illnesses that can be developed from breathing in air of a poor quality. These can range from mild cold-like symptoms to severe, even life threatening, long-term conditions such as Tuberculosis and Legionnaires’ Disease.
Your Legal Obligations for Commercial Air Conditioning Service
As a facility manager, you have a responsibility to stay on top of the maintenance of your building’s HVAC system. The applicable Australian Standard that you need to be following is AS/NZ 3666.2:2011 – Air-handling and water systems – Microbial control. This Standard outlines what sections of a commercial air conditioning system need to be serviced, and how regularly those services need to take place. Failure to comply with this standard may result in litigation, fines and lawsuits, but sticking to its recommendations will go a long way to ensuring that the indoor air of your building remains safe to breathe for everyone inside.
Timeline of HVAC Maintenance
Now that you know that you have obligations to periodically service your building’s HVAC system, what do those obligations actually entail? According to the AS/NZ 3666.2:2011 Standard, HVAC systems have five major areas that require regular attention in order to keep the system operating at a healthy capacity. While each of these areas have different recommended intervals for maintenance checks, it’s essential that you are keeping track of how much time has elapsed since you last had each area serviced.
The five areas and their recommended maintenance timelines are as follows:
- Outdoor air intakes and exhausts – should be inspected once a month.
- Air filters – should be inspected once a month.
- Humidifiers – should be inspected once a month.
- Evaporative air-cooling equipment – all parts should be inspected once every three months. These parts include:
- Sump
- Wetted pads
- Water strainer
- Air filter
- Drainage system
- Ducts and components – each part has a separate recommended inspection timeline.
- Coils (monthly)
- Trays and sump (monthly)
- Condensate drains, tundishes, & traps (monthly)
- Fans (every three months)
- Ductwork (annually)
- Terminal units and terminal unit components (annually)
- Return air and relief air grilles (annually)
If you follow this timeline, your HVAC system will continue its job of outputting clean air into your building, while also being more energy efficient, and being far less likely to experience any major, costly breakdowns. Truly, there are only upsides to following your obligations and getting your commercial air conditioning serviced.
Air-rite’s Commercial Air Conditioning Service
The highly-skilled HVAC mechanics at Air-rite have been successfully servicing commercial air conditioning systems in South East Queensland for decades. If you are a facility manager looking to fulfil your legal obligations by servicing your building’s HVAC system, then get in touch with the Air-rite team today on 07 3274 2199.
