Bob has been sent on a service call where the customer is complaining about her power bill. She thinks that the heat pump may be the problem. Her power bill is much higher than last year. She explained this to Bob and he started by asking a question, “Does the auxiliary heat light come on very often on your thermostat?”

Air conditioning coil cleaning is an important air conditioning maintenance procedure that sometimes takes some patience, and usually takes a lot of water. First, you have to make some common sense evaluations.

Bob and Btu Buddy were on a service call yesterday where the compressor motor was running overloaded due to internal load; the bearings were dragging or worn. Btu Buddy told Bob, “Motor overload protection and circuit protection are subjects that need to be discussed later.” They’ve gotten together today for that discussion.

In this month’s troubleshooting situation, our customer has called to say that the older package unit that heats and cools his office is managing to warm up the area, but then seems to cool down too much before providing heat again. When you arrive, the first thing you note is that the indoor blower motor is operating, and you check the fan switch setting on the thermostat.

Bob got a call from the dispatcher to go to an office building that has a 3-ton heat pump compressor that has been shutting off after startup. The fan would continue to run. The building maintenance man said that he had observed the shutting down of the compressor several times.

Here are some tips for HVAC and plumbing systems maintenance in commercial buildings that will help mechanical contractors and their customers save time and money.

Bob has gone on a service call where the customer is complaining that her house is not getting up to temperature. The house was heated with a heat pump with three stages of auxiliary strip heat. Bob removed the panel to the strip heat and found one of the units was not pulling current.

Bob and Btu Buddy have gotten together for a review of their last service call, which involved a control system that Bob was not very familiar with - pneumatic controls. Bob asked, “Why would anyone want to use air as the power source to operate the controls for a building?”

Effective pump maintenance allows industrial plants and commercial facilities to keep pumps operating well, to detect problems in time to schedule repairs, and to avoid early pump failures. Regular maintenance also reveals deteriorations in efficiency and capacity, which can occur long before a pump fails.

The customer’s complaint on this call was an overall overheating of his building. The manager told Bob, “We arrived this morning and the entire building was hot and keeps getting hotter.” He led Bob to the basement where there was a boiler. Bob found that the system had pneumatic controls.