Before the First Cold Snap: HVAC System Readiness

As crisp autumn air moves in, it's time to shift focus to preparing your facility for the upcoming heating season. Here's a practical guide to help ensure your HVAC systems perform properly throughout the winter months.

Optimize Your Economizer: Start by fine-tuning your economizer settings and functionality. These systems can significantly reduce energy costs by leveraging cooler outside air for free cooling, so verify they're calibrated correctly to maximize efficiency during the transitional fall weather. Check outside air damper actuators, linkages, and minimum position settings, as well. A damper stuck open on a cold morning can freeze a coil.

Comprehensive Fall Maintenance

Your fall preventive maintenance should be thorough, going beyond the basics of changing filters and belts. MSC recommends:

• Heat Exchanger Inspection: Check for cracks or corrosion to maintain optimal heat transfer and prevent potential safety hazards such as carbon monoxide and flue gases entering the airstream.

• Boiler Combustion Analysis: Test combustion efficiency and verify safety controls, flame sensors, and low water cutoffs before the boiler carries the full load.

• Heat Pump System Check: Verify both heating and cooling modes are functioning correctly for those unpredictable fall temperature swings.

• Hydronic System Operational Inspection: Confirm proper pump and valve operation and even heat distribution throughout the building, so the system is ready when cold weather arrives.

• Heating Control Tests: Ensure that all thermostats, sensors, and control systems are accurately reading and responding to temperature changes.

• Freeze Protection Tests: Verify that freeze stats and low limit controls trip and reset properly, and check glycol concentration in any systems that rely on it. A failed freeze stat can mean a burst coil and an expensive emergency call.

• Cooling Tower Winterization: Whether your tower stays in service or shuts down for the season, check basin heaters, drain or bypass piping as needed, and confirm damper and louver operation for low ambient conditions.

• Steam Trap Survey: Failed traps waste energy and can cause water hammer once the system is under load.

Consider Retro-Commissioning

Fall and winter are ideal times to conduct retro-commissioning on your HVAC system to resolve original construction flaws or issues that emerged over time. This process can reduce energy costs, minimize unexpected downtime and repairs, and extend the lifespan of your equipment. MSC is NEBB certified in building systems commissioning and can evaluate how your systems are actually performing against how they were designed to perform.