Commercial HVAC that keeps your building off the emergency list.

The chiller service plan and records

Require the contractor to submit a facility service plan and schedule as part of the contract. That is the advice of an EPA-funded guide, hosted on the ENERGY STAR site and dated December 1997. The plan should list the equipment, the tasks for each system or piece of equipment, and the schedule. Ask that the plan include an annual startup and shutdown plan for the cooling system. Give the contractor your list of the times when equipment must not be shut off.

Have measurements such as motor amps and volts, temperatures and pressures taken and documented for each piece of equipment. The purpose is to see how they change over time, which helps predict or reveal problems affecting efficiency and reliability. Have copies of test results, such as oil analysis and water treatment analysis, sent to the owner for review.

Ask which refrigerant each machine holds and which EPA rule applies to it, and have the refrigerant type and charge written on the equipment record. EPA's leak-repair page names chillers, commercial split systems and packaged rooftop units as comfort cooling appliances. The charge threshold and repair deadline are set out in our commercial maintenance FAQ.

The cooling tower

Ask in writing who owns your tower's water management program: the tower contractor, the water-treatment vendor or your own staff.

CDC's cooling-tower guidance says that if Legionella is present, the aerosolized water can spread the bacteria over miles. It tells owners to use a water management program to establish, track and improve operation and maintenance activities. The guidance for towers includes:

• An offline disinfection and cleaning at least annually.
• Automated anti-corrosion, anti-scale and disinfectant addition and monitoring.
• Site-specific log sheets, test procedures, service reports and test results kept on site.

ASHRAE Standard 188 sets minimum legionellosis risk management requirements for building water systems. Its public fact sheet says it is written with enforceable language to facilitate code and regulatory adoption, so whether it binds a particular building depends on who has adopted it. The FAQ below takes that up.

Rooftop units

Ask to see the service log for your rooftop units after each visit. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's maintenance guidance for unitary HVAC equipment says it is important to keep a written log, preferably in electronic form in a computer maintenance management system.

Ask whether visits cover these checks from that guidance, which the Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program lists:

• Inspect the coil, straighten fins and clean as needed.
• Check filter condition against the system type and the manufacturer's recommendations.
• On belt-driven units, check for wear, tension and misalignment.
• Inspect refrigerant lines and address leakage issues.

Ask how your units are anchored. FEMA's Hurricane and Flood Mitigation Handbook for Public Facilities says wind and wind-borne debris can damage or destroy rooftop-mounted equipment. It says wind mitigation for non-enclosed rooftop equipment can be accomplished by making sure the equipment is well anchored to resist the design wind forces for the geographic location.

Tampa Bay's calendar

Plan outages that need the plant down for December through March. That is our reading of the figures below, not a standard, and your own no-shutdown list can narrow it further.

Tampa has no month without cooling load. In the National Weather Service's 1991-2020 daily normals for Tampa, every month carries cooling degree days. January, the lowest, carries 61. August, the peak, carries 589. Heating is the smaller job: the monthly normals add up to roughly 430 heating degree days a year against roughly 3,900 cooling degree days.

The four months with the lowest cooling load are December, January, February and March. NOAA's National Hurricane Center puts the Atlantic hurricane season at June 1 to November 30. Those four months fall after it.

Storm, flood and code

If your building is in a flood hazard area, ask whether your plant equipment sits at or above the elevation Florida's code requires. FEMA's handbook says HVAC components generally are not flood resistant, so they will be damaged or destroyed when exposed to flood water. It calls elevation the most effective overall solution for mitigating both primary and secondary components.

Florida's code points the same way. The 8th Edition (2023) Florida Building Code, Mechanical, requires mechanical systems, equipment and appliances in flood hazard areas to be located at or above the elevation required by Section 1612 of the Florida Building Code, Building. It permits lower placement only for equipment designed and installed to prevent water from entering or accumulating within the components and to resist flood loads. In a flood hazard area, the Florida Building Code, Existing Building, requires replacement of flood-damaged exterior equipment to meet the same Section 1612 requirements.

Ask the building department which Florida Building Code edition governs a permit filed near December 31, 2026. The citations above are to the 8th Edition. State materials on floridabuilding.org list the 9th Edition (2026) as effective December 31, 2026.

Check any contractor's Florida license before work starts. The state's DBPR records search lets you verify licenses by name or license number. Blume's is CAC-1822618.