Regular Cleaning Is The Key To HVAC Efficiency Success

The Key to HVAC Success: Clean Your Coils, Cooling Towers and Boilers
As a building and facilities manager, you know your way around a host of systems: electrical, plumbing, air handling and mechanical. You’ve spent time up close and personal with boilers, chillers, ducts, fans, cooling towers and refrigerants.
But not everyone comes up the ranks with extensive exposure to the nitty-gritty of HVAC. What’s the most important thing you need to know about maintaining a properly functioning HVAC system?
For the knowledgeable and novices alike, we at Goodway Technologies offer three words of advice that will get you 90% of the way down the road to a good maintenance plan.
Drum roll, please. Our words of wisdom are, "Keep it clean.”
Yep, it’s that simple. “Keep it clean.”
Of course, there is a little more to it than that. You have other regular maintenance tasks to perform and things to repair when they break. But, if you “keep it clean”, you save yourself a whole lot of headaches. Not only do you reduce breakdowns and premature equipment failure, but your operating costs won’t skyrocket, like they do when equipment becomes dirty and fouled.
The “keep it clean” approach keeps building tenants comfortable and healthy, boosting occupancy rates. When you “keep it clean”, you keep your staff overtime to a minimum, because you’re heading off HVAC problems before they happen – and we all know that maintenance problems don’t happen at the staff’s convenience.
Here are some examples of the “keep it clean” strategy at work:
Clean coils. Clean your coils and as a result, your chillers, cooling towers and boilers will reward you with efficient performance. That great performance means less system downtime, and less staff overtime to deal with emergencies. Clean coils also help keep building temperatures steady, while minimizing energy costs.
Clean cooling towers. Maintain peak system efficiency by regularly vacuuming your tower and by regularly cleaning your tower’s fill. Building occupants enjoy sustained, comfortable temperatures and you save money on energy consumption and operation costs. A clean system is far less likely to harbor potentially deadly bacteria, such as Legionella.
Clean boilers. Allowing soot and scale to build up on heat exchanger surfaces is like inviting a thief into your building. Even a thin deposit of soot can cost thousands of dollars in operating costs, outages, or repairs. The solution is simple – keep your boilers clean.
We’ll throw one more in the mix: clean ducts. The cleaner they are, the better. Improving indoor air quality for your building’s occupants keeps them happy and happy occupants are more likely to stay put when it’s time to renew their lease.
Why make things harder than they have to be? Improve efficiency, reduce downtime and overtime, increase comfort, lower costs – all by keeping your equipment clean. Simplify your maintenance and “keep it clean.”