Spring is a great time to consider schedule professional maintenance for your Denver, CO business’s HVAC system. With summer right around the corner, it’s important to be ready for the heat, especially when you have customers to keep comfortable.
Our experts at Horizon Services are a top local HVAC team to perform your springtime commercial air conditioning service. Follow these steps to prepare your system for warmer temperatures and keep it reliable all season. We will walk you through getting professional maintenance for your business.
Providing Your Business With Professional Maintenance Services
While you can perform a few simple maintenance tasks, steps that involve electrical components or removing grates and mechanical parts must be performed by a specialist. When you schedule your maintenance visit, you may be able to request a time at the beginning or end of your business hours. This will allow the HVAC technicians access to everything they need without interrupting your staff or customers.
Air Filter Cleaning and Replacement
Regular air filter cleaning and replacement are essential processes that define the functionality of your entire HVAC system. When an air filter becomes clogged with materials like dust, it leads to various mechanical and cost problems, as the system has to work harder to overcome these obstructions. For example, clogged filters cause the motor to work harder to push air through the system. This increases component breakdown because the increased movement causes continuous wear, which also leads to higher utility bills.
One thing not many people know about is that one result of a dirty air filter is evaporator coil freeze-ups. When your filter is dirty, cold air backs up into the system. This disrupts the heat transfer process and causes the internal refrigerant to become even colder. This freezes the evaporator coil, making your HVAC push out warmer air. Our team will replace your HVAC air filters if they’re dirty. If you have a lot of dust, pollen, or other particulates in your business environment, your HVAC professional may have suggestions for improving your indoor air quality.
Checking Electrical Connections
During standard use, an HVAC system has many moving components. However, while these components function, their vibration can cause some electrical connections to loosen. For this reason, every professional maintenance session should include electrical connection checks.
During a standard maintenance visit, one of our professional HVAC technicians will visually inspect wires for damage that might have occurred during the winter. They’ll also tighten any loosened connections since the last maintenance session. Next, they’ll use a multimeter to measure the voltage and current flow within the HVAC to ensure electricity flows at its most efficient levels. Since we train our team for these kinds of checks, you can depend on them performing the proper safety precautions during maintenance.
Component Upkeep
During the everyday operation of your HVAC system, it’s common for components to experience significant wear and tear. Spring can bring wild temperature swings to the Denver area, with mornings below freezing and midday temperatures warm enough for you to wear shorts. Because of this, your HVAC system may be working extra hard. During a maintenance session, two of the essential processes are component upkeep and repair. Our team knows to check each moving component for signs of damage. Parts that commonly wear out over time include evaporator coils, blower motors, compressors, belts, bearings, and capacitors. We’ll check out each of these and replace them if needed.
One HVAC component that often needs maintenance is the thermostat. From simple battery changes to replacement, ensuring that the thermostat is functioning properly is critical to workplace comfort. We’ll check and calibrate your existing thermostat or replace it if needed to keep things comfortable.
Additionally, lubricant levels tend to wear down with the nearly constant movement of components. A professional will check these components and lubricate them when needed. The parts that typically get this treatment are the fan motor bearings and the compressor motor. Performing this task will reduce operational noise, making your business environment quieter while keeping indoor temperature levels comfortable.
Condenser Maintenance
The condenser is the portion of your HVAC system that sits outside. This unit pulls in external air and circulates it through your building after filtering it. Unfortunately, this is also a prime location where external factors can impede the functioning of your HVAC system. During fall and winter, objects like leaves, pollen, and fallen branches settle around the unit, causing it to work less efficiently.
To counter this, a professional will clean and maintain your condenser unit to function efficiently. In Denver, we experience a lot of cottonwood seeds, Kentucky bluegrass pollen and Timothy grass pollen. We’ll clean these away to keep your external condenser operating at its best throughout the year. Sometimes, detritus like pollen and leaf litter can enter the condenser housing. When this happens, we’ll remove the grates and access panels and vacuum away any accumulated loose material.
With the system open, we’ll use a specialized cleaning solution to clean the coils. This will increase their efficiency during the warm season. Finally, we’ll run a fin comb over any bent fins to straighten them out; this improves the system’s airflow.
Refrigerant Checks
When your HVAC system is low on refrigerant, you’ll notice symptoms like warm air, frozen coils, ice on the lines, or even strange noises coming from the system. For this reason, it’s important to check refrigerant levels at least once a year to keep your system running optimally.
Our commercial HVAC service technicians will first check your refrigerant levels by using pressure gauges. They’ll compare their readings with the manufacturer’s specifications for your HVAC system. Next, they’ll use superheat and subcooling checks to get the most accurate reading. A superheat test measures the differential between the actual temperature of the refrigerant vapor line and the saturation temperature at that same pressure level. This helps determine if there is too little refrigerant. Subcooling tests, on the other hand, subtract the saturation temperature from the temperature of the refrigerant line near the condenser. This will tell the technician if the system has too much refrigerant.
If your refrigerant levels are off, the specialist will check for and repair any leaks in the line and replace the lost refrigerant. They’ll use one of our recovery machines to remove any old refrigerant and add the correct amount of new refrigerant. Your cooling system will be much more efficient since they’ve already sealed any problematic leaks.
Schedule Dependable HVAC Maintenance
Running through this HVAC checklist will extend the lifespan and ensure the optimal functionality of your system. Professional maintenance will also help us identify potential upgrades that we can employ to increase your business’s comfort levels. A well-tuned system lasts much longer and saves more money than an improperly maintained one.
At Horizon Services, we’ve served the Denver community for almost 30 years, and we’ve contributed to the upkeep of hundreds of HVAC systems. Call us today for a consultation, and we’ll set up a spring maintenance session for your commercial HVAC system so that it can provide comfort for the entire year.
