About: Bonus Eventus

When it comes to running a commercial property, we all know that the focus for investment is the front of house. After all, that’s where the customers, tenants or patrons are going to be, and you want to be able to provide them with a good experience and make sure they are in a nice environment. This all makes sense. But the problem comes when property managers get too focused on the front of house, and forget that the back of house needs some investment too.

Why Is Your Back of House Important?

The back of house might not be glamorous, but it is important. It’s the place all of your business-critical systems live, and it’s what keeps your business running and your front of house operational. If your front of house was a puppet, then your back of house is the strings – you need one for the other to work. And because these systems are critical, they need care, attention and maintenance. If not, you could find that your front of house starts to suffer as a result. For example, your HVAC system is a part of your back of house. It’s the heart of your building, providing heat, hot water and ventilation, making the environment habitable and comfortable. If it isn’t properly maintained, then you could start seeing leaks, hot and cold spots in your property, vents getting dirt or breaking or incredibly high energy bills out of the blue. Customers might not see the back of house, but that doesn’t make it any less important than your front of house when it comes to business investment and attention.

A Cautionary Tale

To help illustrate exactly what this means for your property, let us tell you a story:

A few years ago, we were called out to inspect and repair the plant room for a block of flats. There were 20 flats in the block, and a single plant room to service the whole building. The equipment in that plant room was with around £2 million, and it provided heating, hot water and ventilation to every flat and the communal areas. But once the plant room had been installed, it had just been left alone for years with minimal attention and no professional maintenance for 6 years. When we asked, the block manager said it was because they were trying to cut costs, and preventative maintenance was an expensive bill on top of all the other running costs. So by not doing maintenance on it, he had saved himself a few thousand pounds a year that he could put into maintaining and refurbishing the common areas and the flats. in other words, he invested only in his front of house.

In theory, this approach made sense. But when we examined the plant room, we found it in poor condition. There was so much wear, dirt build-up and damage that most of it couldn’t actually be repaired. Instead, the most cost-effective route for him was to completely replace the plant room after just 5 years in operation – costing him another £2million.

To put that in perspective, if that plant room had been properly managed and maintained it could have lasted for decades before it needed replacing. But instead the block manager chose to invest the maintenance cost in his front of house each year, shooting himself in the foot and costing him a lot more just 5 years on. Needless to say, we are now maintaining that plant room for him, and all is still running smoothly! We told you that story not to blow our own trumpet, but to show you just how much not investing in proper back of house maintenance could cost you.

Not Investing Costs You Money

By now you should see just how important investing in the back of house is for facilities managers. Your priority is ensuring things run smoothly and your customers have a good experience, and a big part of that is keeping your HVAC systems operating at full capacity. A few ways not investing in maintenance work could cost you money include:

• Costly repair bills: If you catch an issue with your HVAC systems quickly, it can usually be repaired without any problem and not cost a lot of money. But as you saw in our earlier example, if you don’t maintain your systems properly then the repairs just get more and more expensive, and can even mean you need to replace your whole system.

• Loss of earnings: Certain problems with your HVAC system can mean you need to shut down your business until it’s fixed. Things like gas leaks or floods can be a huge risk for customers, and you will not be able to earn anything while the repairs are taking place. This could take a day, or it could take several weeks – meaning you could lose out on a lot of earnings.

• Damages: We don’t just mean damage to your HVAC system, but damage to your premises. Leaks can cause water damage, corroded pipework can cause issues with your wall structure, or moisture escaping can seep into your walls causing mould, peeling paint and more. All of this will cost you money to repair, on top of the cost of fixing the problem

• Reputational damage: Imagine you’re running a restaurant, and one of the corners is always too hot. Customers seated there will not have a pleasant dining experience, and may complain about the temperature to their friends – who may choose not to dine with you in future. You’ve now lost future income because you failed to invest in fixing an issue with your back of house systems.

At Bonus Eventus Maintenance Ltd, we specialise in ongoing maintenance for HVAC systems in commercial properties. Whether you’re the property manager for a block of flats, a restaurant, an office block or a church, we can help you keep your VAC systems in full working order, preventing problems and ultimately saving you time and money. If you would like to know more, just get in touch with the team today.

If you are looking for a new heating system for your commercial property, you might be tempted to just replace what you have with a newer model. But what if we told you that you don’t have to use a boiler-based heating system? That boilers aren’t the only way to generate heat and hot water in your properties? And that, in fact, they are probably costing you a lot more money, time and energy than you realise?

Your alternative? Heat pumps. Heat pumps have been around since the 1940s, but only relatively recently have they become a common products for wider commercial use. They are much more modern than traditional boiler installations, and give property managers a lot of advantages when it comes to efficiency, performance and cost. And with the energy market behaving the way it is right now, property managers are on the lookout for cheaper and more efficient ways to heat their properties! So before you go with what you’ve always used, ask yourself, would a heat pump or a boiler be the better option for me?

Boilers

Boilers are the default choice for many property managers, because they are a known and well tested entity. Pretty much all modern properties both residential and commercial are built with a boiler heating system in mind, which means it’s much more convenient to install and run. A simple sealed chamber device, boilers use a coolant (usually a water-based solution or steam) heated to a certain temperature to generate heat and hot water. There are a few different types of boiler available depending on your property and preferences, but the most common types are:

• Gas
• Biomass
• Condensing
• Combi
• Electric
• Wood pellet

The most common options by far for commercial properties are gas and electric.

Pros: Boilers are well known for their quick startup speeds, so you will get from cold to warm in a much quicker time than a heat pump. While boilers do take up space, you can get compact boiler units that can take up less space than some heat pumps. They are also more heavily regulated, with strict standard design and testing codes to follow to ensure safety in operation.

Cons: Boilers of any type are not very energy efficient, with an average efficiency rating of 85%.  They also produce large amounts of CO2 while they run – the average gas boiler will produce 4500 kWh of CO2 per year, making it one of the least environmentally friendly options. They are also much more expensive to run, which means you will end up spending more in the long run.

Heat Pumps

Compared to a boiler, a heat pump is a more complicated device, but the ultimate goal is more or less the same – generating heat for your property. Heat pumps work by absorbing and transferring thermal energy from a low-grade source to a heating element (the pump’s coolant) with a higher temperature, before dispersing it through the system. You can get different types of heat pump depending on which source you want to use, but the main types are:

• Air source
• Ground source
• Water source
• Air to water

Most of these pumps will use a liquid refrigerant as coolant, and this is used to pump into their underground pipes or external fan cover tubes, which absorbs the heat and passes it through a compressor, which heats it further before moving it through the heating and hot water elements of the property. This method is more complex, but because it relies on natural sources rather than gas it is often much more efficient.

Pros: Heat pumps are far more modern in terms of design, which means they are more naturally suited to energy saving and effectiveness. A heat pump is around 400% more energy efficient than a gas boiler – no matter which type of pump you choose. You can also connect a heat pump to solar panels if you have them installed, saving you even more money. They are also much more environmentally friendly, producing around 2,200 kWh of CO2 emissions per year. Heat pumps will also last between 14 and 15 years, meaning they are likely to last longer than a boiler would if properly maintained.

Cons: The biggest downside to a heat pump is that it requires a compressor to run, and this can be quite noisy. If you have a dedicated plant room away from your main property space then this isn’t an issue, but if you need to run the equipment around tenants then it could cause noise problems. Because heat pumps are more modern it also means that not all properties are suitable for them, so if you want to install a heat pump you will need a survey and potentially even a full heating system refurb, which can be expensive.

So if you want the most for your money, a heat pump is your best bet. Heat pumps come out on top for CO2 emissions, energy efficiency and reliability – all of which are incredibly important in a commercial property. And with the government pushing businesses to opt for lower carbon alternatives, a heat pump could be a great way to earn your green points as well. At Bonus Eventus Maintenance Ltd we work with facilities and property managers in office blocks, schools, care homes and residential blocks who need help providing the best heating and ventilation systems for their buildings, and are frustrated with poor maintenance service. If you would like to know more, please just get in touch to speak with one of our team members today.