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Apartment buildings, co-ops and the shops beneath them
Boiler rooms, steam balancing, hot-water systems and the commercial units at street level. Written records, documented settings, and work scheduled around when the building is occupied.
What a managing agent actually needs
A record per boiler room.
Model and serial numbers, control settings as found and as left, water treatment, safety device test results, and the venting arrangement. Enough that a different contractor could pick the building up, which is the only real test of a record.
Settings that are written down.
Pressure control, cycle timing, thermostat or sensor locations, and outdoor reset where fitted. A building whose settings live in one person’s memory is a building that will be reset wrongly the first time that person is unavailable.
A balance report, once.
Which apartments overheat, which never warm, and what venting change fixes it. Done properly once, a one-pipe building stays balanced for years and the fuel saving is real.
Somebody who will say no.
Where a boiler is genuinely finished we will say so and set out what should replace it. Where the building needs venting, pitch and a pressure setting, we will say that instead — and that is the considerably smaller invoice.
Scheduled work
- Before the season. Combustion tested with instruments, safeties tested, low-water cutoff flushed and proved, pressure control set, boiler skimmed where needed. September, not the first cold Monday.
- During the season. Water level and quality, cycle behaviour, complaint patterns mapped against where they come from in the building rather than treated one apartment at a time.
- Venting. Main vents assessed and sized as a system. In most buildings here this has never been done, and it is the single most effective thing available.
- After the season. What failed, what was patched, what should be planned for the summer when the building can be off heat without anybody minding.
- Commercial units at street level. Rooftop and split systems, extract for food premises, and the make-up air balance that decides whether the shop pulls cold air off the street all winter.
Overheating is the expensive fault
It is invisible on a complaint log.
Nobody rings to say their apartment is too warm; they open a window. The building keeps paying and the log stays quiet.
It is usually a sensor in the wrong place.
One thermostat in the coldest apartment runs the whole building to satisfy that one room. Every other apartment gets whatever it takes to warm that one.
And it is usually fixable with vents.
Speed up the cold end, slow down the hot end, and the sensor stops asking for so much. That is a survey and a box of vents rather than a capital project.
A main vent on a steam main. In most buildings here this is the item nobody has touched.
Three things we will not put in a contract
- A guaranteed response time in hours. We will tell you where you are in the queue and call back. A printed number gets broken on the first properly cold night, which is exactly when you would be relying on it.
- A percentage off your fuel bill. Correct pressure and correct venting genuinely reduce fuel use, and in an overheating building the saving can be substantial. The figure comes after we have surveyed it, never before.
- Work that belongs to another trade. Roofing, structure, asbestos removal, plumbing beyond the heating system, and electrical distribution beyond our isolators. We photograph what we find and name who should do it.