Sometimes the notebook is the needed tool for the job.
Boiler’s plastic condensate pipe connected into copper pipe.
The acidic condensate water will cause a leak on the copper pipe, signs already visible.
Commercial kitchen extractor fans
In a restaurant or in any commercial kitchen it is obviously important to keep the work areas clean, tidy and disinfected.
Nobody would like to have guests who got sick due to the unhygienic circumstances.
The ventilation is often a part of a kitchen which is thought to be not so important.
The extraction hood above the appliances leads to fans and the extracted vapor grease and fat flows thru these.
This is how it looks like on the inside without maintenance. It’s covered with fat extracted thru the hood.
This can shorten its lifetime and can cause damage to it which leads to expensive repairs.
Maintenance is always cheaper than repair.
Nobody would like to have guests who got sick due to the unhygienic circumstances.
The ventilation is often a part of a kitchen which is thought to be not so important.
The extraction hood above the appliances leads to fans and the extracted vapor grease and fat flows thru these.
This is how it looks like on the inside without maintenance. It’s covered with fat extracted thru the hood.
This can shorten its lifetime and can cause damage to it which leads to expensive repairs.
Maintenance is always cheaper than repair.
Loft water tanks
Why is it important to regularly check, maintain and clean the water tanks?
That’s why.
Heat Interface Units (HIU)
Heat interface units (HIU) are usually installed in apartment buildings, where the heating and hot water is provided from a central heating or district heating system. There are no individual boilers in the flats, but one big boiler in the plant room. The HIU uses the hot water from this central boiler to provide heating and domestic hot water for the flats. It is a complex unit with several diverter valves, actuators, thermostats, sensors.
Almost like a boiler but it does not use the heat of burning gas directly but the heat of the hot water from the central boiler. This one has a broken actuator and the tenant was left without hot water. As in most of the cases this fault could have been prevented. The blue scale marks on the valve were visible before the actuator got broken and they mean an issue with the valve. During a maintenance visit the early sign of breakdown of the valve would have been spotted. unfortunately, there was no maintenance made on this hence the issue got worse and the valve got stuck and broke the actuator.
The HIUs are just as important parts of a heating system as a boiler and as such they need to be checked, maintained at least annually, preferably quarterly as they are providing the hot water as well.
Just an old flue?
The flue is an important part of every heating system. It is responsible for the venting of toxic combustion gasses.
The tightness of the flue is always checked at the maintenance visits. For the untrained eye, it might just be an old flue, but the professional engineer sees the possibility of carbon monoxide leak.
At the first site, the flue was leaking beyond repair and needed to be replaced asap.
At the other site, the fire proof mortar is worn and on top of that there is no CO alarm fitted. With a not properly maintained boiler and without CO alarm, both the primary and secondary preventive methods were disregarded, hence there was a big chance of CO leaking, which is a well known dangerous situation.
The first line of safety is proper maintenance. Keep yourself, your tenants and gas appliances safe.
