Boilers, chillers, and the plant rooms that run them.

Depends on total cooling load, building layout, and how zones are split. Buildings over roughly 75,000 square feet, multi-story offices with a central plant room, and any property where rooftop space or structural load is constrained usually land on chillers and hydronics. Smaller single-story buildings, retail strips, and light industrial almost always run on RTUs. We run the load and the lifecycle cost both ways before we recommend.

Yes - any boiler operating above 15 PSI requires state inspection through the Ohio Department of Commerce, Division of Industrial Compliance. That covers most commercial steam boilers and most hydronic systems running at meaningful pressure. We prep the unit, pull the records, and meet the inspector on site as part of our annual service. Skipping the inspection is a code violation and an insurance problem.

Annually for most commercial chillers, before the cooling season. Fouled tubes drop heat transfer, force the compressor to work harder, and quietly raise your kWh bill 8-15% before anyone notices. On open-loop cooling-tower systems we also pull a water sample and adjust the treatment program at the same visit. Closed-loop systems with good water treatment can sometimes stretch to every other year - we look at the actual tube condition before extending.

Retubing a chiller or fire-tube boiler typically runs 35-55% of replacement cost and buys 10-15 more years if the shell and tubesheet are sound. We recommend retubing when the equipment is otherwise in good shape, controls are still serviceable, and replacement would force a major mechanical-room redesign. We recommend replacement when efficiency gains alone justify the capital - modern condensing boilers and inverter chillers often hit 95%+ AFUE or 0.50 kW/ton, numbers a 20-year-old plant can't match.

Yes. We work alongside building automation systems from Honeywell, Johnson Controls Metasys, Siemens, Tridium Niagara, and Schneider Electric. For plants without modern controls, we can scope a BAS retrofit that ties boiler, chiller, pumps, and VFDs into a single dashboard. Remote diagnostics and trending data shorten our response time and let us catch problems before they become emergencies.

Three high-ROI moves: VFDs on constant-speed pumps and fans (cuts pump kWh 30-60% on variable loads), modulating burners on older on/off boilers (boosts seasonal efficiency 5-12%), and condensing economizers on steam boiler flue stacks (reclaims 5-10% of heat lost up the stack). On chillers, low-pressure-drop tube enhancements and VFDs on cooling-tower fans are usually next. We quote ROI in writing tied to your actual utility rates and run hours.

ASHRAE Standard 15 governs mechanical-room refrigerant safety - leak detection, ventilation, alarms, and refrigerant quantity limits per room volume. Centrifugal chillers running R-134a, R-1233zd, R-513A, or R-514A all have ASHRAE 15 obligations. Mechanical rooms typically need a refrigerant sensor wired to ventilation and a code-compliant alarm. We inspect the room for compliance as part of every chiller service and document gaps in the report.