Surveys & takeovers
HVAC condition surveys
Before anyone can price maintenance honestly, somebody has to walk the site and write down what is there. That is what a survey is for.
When a survey is the right first step
If you have just taken on a building, inherited a contract, been handed an estate with no records, or you keep paying for the same breakdowns, a maintenance quote without a survey is guesswork. It will either be priced too low and the visits will be thin, or padded to cover the unknown.
The survey removes the guesswork for both sides. You find out what you own and what condition it is in; we find out what the contract actually needs to cover.
- Taking on a site with no asset list or incomplete history
- F-Gas records that stop, or were never started
- Recurring breakdowns on the same systems
- Budgeting for replacement plant over the next few years
- Pre-acquisition or pre-lease due diligence on building services
- Tendering maintenance and needing a defensible scope
What the survey covers
What is installed
Every system located and recorded: make, model, serial, duty, area served, refrigerant type and nameplate charge. Roof plant, plant rooms, ceiling voids and back-of-house included.
What condition it is in
Coil, filter, fan and drain condition, corrosion, electrical condition, running readings where the plant can be run, control and sensor operation, and obvious signs of past leaks or bodged repairs.
What it means
Condition graded per asset, remedials priced, end-of-life plant identified with an indicative replacement order, compliance gaps listed, and a maintenance schedule set from the findings.
What we typically find
None of this is dramatic on its own. It is the accumulation that matters: a site where nothing has been properly cleaned for several years fails in the first hot spell, and everything becomes an emergency at once. Full detail on how we bring those sites back under control is on the maintenance and takeover page.
Common questions
- What do you actually produce at the end of a survey?
- An asset register of what is installed with make, model, serial, location, refrigerant type and charge; a condition grade against each item; a list of immediate remedials with prices; the compliance gaps we found; and a proposed maintenance schedule and cost based on the plant rather than a template.
- How long does a survey take?
- It depends on unit count and access. A single office floor is usually part of a day. A hotel or a multi-building site with roof plant, plant rooms and back-of-house refrigeration takes longer and sometimes needs more than one visit to reach everything.
- Do we have to give you the maintenance contract afterwards?
- No. The survey and the register are yours. Some clients use them to tender the work properly, which is a reasonable thing to do with a building nobody has documented.
- Can you survey a site while it stays open?
- Usually yes. Most of a survey is inspection and recording rather than intrusive work. Anything needing an isolation, a ceiling opened or a shutdown gets booked separately at a time that suits the site.
Related commercial HVAC services
Want a site surveyed?
Tell us the building type, roughly how many systems are involved and what records exist. We will come back with what a survey would cover.