About: Bonus Eventus

Being a facilities or property manager comes with a lot of legal responsibilities. There are many areas that need your attention on a day to day basis, which means some of the annual checks can slip through the cracks. But the reality is simple – if you have a commercial property with any kind of gas appliance, it’s a criminal offence not to have a valid Gas Safety Certificate. These certificates need to be done once a year, and are often best done at the same time as your boiler service for convenience. But we know it’s all too easy to forget it needs doing, which often means rushing to find a technician who can do it before the deadline. This can lead to some difficult situations for you, so we wanted to talk about what a commercial gas safety check is, and why quick and cheap really isn’t your best option.

What Goes Into A Gas Safety Check

You may think that a gas safety check is just someone coming to look at the boiler in your building and make sure it’s all working properly and not leaking carbon monoxide into the air. And while domestic gas safety checks are often centred around the boiler (while covering other things as well), a commercial check is a lot more involved. This is partly because the systems used for commercial buildings are bigger and more complex, but also because there are more people using the building and the risk is higher if something were to go wrong. So a good commercial gas safety check will actually cover your entire site, including:

• All boilers
• All appliances in the building, including alarms
• All meters on the premises
• All pipework connected to the gas system

When a technician comes to do these checks, they will do the following on every single one:

• A visual inspection
• Functionality test
• Pressure tests
• Operation tests

This takes a lot of time, but it’s the best way to ensure your building is safe and your gas systems in full working order.

Why Cheaper Isn’t Better

When it comes to gas safety certificates many facilities managers are guilty of leaving it to the last minute, or for looking for the cheapest option rather than the best one. Both of these are understandable given how much these roles require you take on, but they are both incredibly bad decisions that will often come back to bite you in the future.

You see, you will find a lot of companies out there who are offering quick and cheap gas safety certificates for commercial properties. They will come onto your site for half an hour, do a few checks and issue you with the official certificate that means you can prove you met your legal obligations. But the thing is, you didn’t actually meet your obligations at all. As we proved above, a proper gas safety check isn’t just making sure the boiler’s working and there isn’t a leak in your system. It’s a comprehensive check of your entire system to make sure everything is safe, up to code and to flag up any maintenance issues that need to be addressed before they become a bigger problem. That takes a couple of hours to do, and doesn’t cost £50. So you haven’t really got a valid Gas Safety certificate, even if you’re physically holding one.

Contractors that offer this kind of quick and cheap GSC service will often make mistakes because they are rushing to fit in as many as they can, often to cover their own liabilities if they are working on the building in general. So while it might save you a little money in the short term, it’s putting the health and wellbeing of the people in your building at risk, potentially invalidating your insurance, and costing you a lot of money further down the line.

At Bonus Eventus Maintenance, we spend a lot of our time correcting the mistakes of other technicians, particularly when it comes to gas safety checks. We understand the importance of having a comprehensive annual check done, and endeavour to provide you with the best quality service and official documentation to back it up. We carry out gas safety checks for all commercial premises, so if yours is due, or you think you may need to have your appliances rechecked, just get in touch with the team today.

When it comes to any HVAC system, choosing the right one and getting it installed correctly is only part of the process. Once everything is up and running, these delicate systems require regular maintenance and repairs to keep them running smoothly and avoid any nasty surprises. Without regular maintenance work HVAC systems of any type and size can start to break down, leaving you with very expensive bills and maybe even some property damage to contend with. But maintenance isn’t just limited to tightening screws and changing out components. It’s also about one of the less glamorous jobs – cleaning.

What Is A FCU?

FCU stands for Fan Coil Unit, and it’s a fairly standard fixture in most commercial air conditioning and heating systems. It’s designed to move air from inside the system and through multiple components (including a filter, fan blower, condensing coil, plenum box and ductwork) to filter and heat/cool the air before delivering it to the assigned rooms. It’s one of the most efficient ways of heating and cooling air within an HVAC system, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its issues. As a fan coil unit gets older its needs will become more and more frequent, which is one of the reasons regular maintenance is an absolute must.

Why Does It Need Cleaning?

Cleaning is a key part of maintenance work, even though most businesses won’t think twice about it. But here’s the thing. Part of a fan coil unit’s job is to filter air, which means catching all the dust, debris and particles as they move through the system. But all of that debris has to go somewhere, and that’s the filter plate. As you can see in the image below, FCU filter plates can become so full of this debris and dust that they become dense, and air has a harder time moving through them. This means the system has to work harder to push the air through the filter, and the whole system becomes less efficient. Long term this could cause overheating and actually cause your FCU to completely break down – which is a much bigger bill than you want to receive!

To show you what we mean, we took temperature readings of this FCU filter and unit before and after we cleaned it all out. The before readings clock in at around 22.5°C, with a very uneven temperature distribution. You can see the heat is all in the centre, with the edges being left cool or receiving no heat whatsoever. But once the filter had been cleaned out, the temperature was not only more consistent across the whole unit, but it was also the right temperature – 33.3°C. So when we say it’s important to clean your FCU and its filters, we mean it!

Benefits Of Regular FCU Cleaning

Energy Savings: Studies have shown that a dirty or clogged up filter can not only reduce the effectiveness of your HVAC system, but it can increase your energy consumption by 15-25% – so regular cleaning is ultimately easier on your wallet.

Flood prevention: Most fan coil units have a drain line or pan, and if not cleaned and drained regularly it can become blocked up by dirt and debris. This can lead to flooding and cause mould to grow, both of which are bad news for your building.

Extend life expectancy: By regularly cleaning your filters you actively extend the lifespan of your FCU. It prevents things like overheating, burnout of components or unnecessary wear, all of which could contribute to a machine failure.

Better air quality: Indoor air quality is incredibly important, especially if you have people living or working in your building. Having clean filters means they can work more efficiently and filter air effectively, giving you better air quality in your building.

As a general rule, we recommend having your FCU cleaned at least once pr twice a year, to ensure it stays fully functional and running efficiently. At Bonus Eventus Maintenance Ltd we specialise in the maintenance and servicing of commercial HVAC systems. And we love a good clean! We view cleaning as a critical part of our job in keeping your systems healthy. If you’re not happy with your current maintenance provider, or if you don’t know when your filters were last cleaned out, we would love to help. Just get in touch with the team today to book a free consultation.

As commercial heating and ventilation experts, we see a lot of different systems, setups, and situations in our daily work. Most of the sites we visit are ones we maintain on a regular basis, and so we’re able to make sure everything is up to code and address any issues as soon as we spot them. But that’s not always the case. Some of the buildings we’re called out to are either emergency situations or sites that need a lot of work done, and in this case there are often safety concerns around the equipment. And when the building manager decides to take the job in house, we will leave safety recommendations for them to follow. But what happens when we leave the site, and come back to see nothing has been done?

Why Do Unsafe Sites Happen?

Sadly this is something that happens more often than you would think. We will visit a site as part of a survey, or to consult on a problem, and we will find several problems. Things like unsafe gas boilers in a block of flats, for example. This kind of thing is very common, and it’s our job to flag this up as it can be a huge health and safety hazard for people living or working in the building.

So we will take note of it and pass our concerns onto the building’s management company, along with a list of recommendations that will make the site safe again. Sometimes we will be asked to help with this, but sometimes we aren’t, and we won’t visit the site again for another year when their next safety check is due. When we do go back, we find the problem is still there, sometimes worse than it was a year ago. This leaves us in a very difficult position.

Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Let’s say we’re in the situation above. We’ve visited a block of flats for a safety check and discovered their boiler system is unsafe and needs repairs or replacing. We notified building management at the time and provided a quotation to fix it, but it wasn’t accepted. And now we’re back on site and see the issue was never address, and some extra issues have cropped up because of it. What do we do? The way we see it, we have a few options:

• We should shut the gas supply for the boilers off so that the problem won’t be a safety hazard. But if we do this, the tenants will not have any heating or hot water, which is also a health and safety issue.

• We report the issue to buildings management again, with another quotation, and a strong recommendation that it is dealt with right away. Sadly this particular building manager has already shown he isn’t reliable for repair work, and so we don’t know if the issue will actually be fixed.

This leaves us between a rock and a hard place in the form of property managers and the gas safety regulations. If we follow the regulations then we shut down the boiler and we will almost certainly lose our contract with the building straight away. Which is why some unscrupulous businesses might let unsafe sites slide – to keep themselves in work. Or we could submit the recommendation and quote again but not force the issue, in which case we are knowingly leaving the tenants in danger.

To be clear – in this situation we would always shut the gas off. While we do value our customers and their support for our business, safety is our number one priority.

It’s Time For Change

So, what’s the best answer? Well, we think it’s neither. At the moment, a property manager is not under any obligation to accept recommendations or quotes from contractors when it comes to work orders. Even when those recommendations are about safety. Yes, there are laws in place for landlords, but the follow through is not reliable. But when safety is in question, we believe there should be tougher rules in place.

What does that look like exactly? We’re not sure. In an ideal world there would be stricter rules around having remedial safety works carried out, including a requirement for property managers to accept quotations from contractors when they relate to improving safety. Of course property managers shouldn’t be forced to accept quotations from a business they don’t want to work with – but if there were a reporting and follow up process for safety issues, then we wouldn’t find ourselves in this situation and everyone would be safer for it.

At Bonus Eventus Maintenance Ltd safety is always our number 1 concern. Safety checks are an integral part of our business, and we will always include a basic safety check in our maintenance visits. We will also alert you to any issue that are just starting out, or that could be in the future based on what we see, so that you can take appropriate action while it will be a simpler fix and easier on your wallet. If you would like to know more, just get in touch with the team today to book a chat with one of our experts.