Commercial HVAC in Round Rock, TX — Davidson HVAC Management

The survey

One page per unit, and it belongs to the building

Before we quote anything we walk the roof and the plant rooms and write down what is there: make and type, roughly what age, the condition of the curb and the roof penetration, whether the economiser actually travels, what filter size it takes, what state the electrical connections are in, and what the gas section looks like where there is one.

That document is yours. If you change jobs, it goes to whoever takes the building over. If you put the building on the market, it is something to show. That is the entire reason for writing it down rather than keeping it in somebody’s head.

A technician kneeling beside an opened packaged rooftop unit on a Round Rock roof, with the filter rack and blower compartment exposed.

Planned maintenance

Two visits a year

Spring, before the load arrives

Condenser coils cleaned properly rather than rinsed
Charge verified by superheat and subcooling, not by pressure alone
Belts, bearings and drive alignment
Economiser dampers opened and proved to travel
Condensate routes cleared and float switches tested
Electrical connections torqued, contactors inspected
Filters replaced with ones that actually fit the rack

Autumn, before the first cold night

Combustion tested on gas sections and figures recorded
Heat exchangers inspected
Flue and combustion air checked as installed rather than as drawn
Defrost proved on heat pumps
Auxiliary heat checked for running when it should not be
Freeze preparation on anything with water in it
Readings compared against the spring visit and the drift noted

Multi-tenant

The awkward part is rarely the equipment

Who owns which piece

In a great many buildings nobody can say with confidence whether a given rooftop unit is the landlord’s or the tenant’s, and it only becomes urgent when something expensive fails. The survey records what we found. It does not settle the lease, but it stops the argument starting from zero.

One tenant’s extract, everybody’s problem

A restaurant with a big hood and no make-up air does not only make its own unit struggle. It depressurises the building, and the shop two doors down cannot keep its front door shut in February. We measure the building, not the complaint.

The unit that was sized for a shell

Rooftop units are often specified before anybody knows what the space will be. A unit chosen for open retail and then occupied by a clinic with a dozen rooms and an autoclave is not a fault, it is a mismatch — and it wants a survey rather than a repair.

Fit-out

Before the tenant signs

What we look at

What is on the roof, its age and its condition
The curbs and roof penetrations, which are often the real cost
Whether the capacity has any relationship to the intended use
Extract, and whether make-up air exists at all
Gas supply and whether it can carry what is planned
Electrical capacity at the unit
Where the condensate goes, and whether that is legal and sensible

Why it pays for itself

Finding out during a fit-out that the gas supply will not carry a commercial kitchen is an expensive surprise. Finding it out before a lease is signed is a negotiation, and it changes who pays.

We will write it up either way. If the honest answer is that the building is sound and there is nothing to worry about, that is what the note will say, and it will be a short note.

The boundary

What we turn down

Chiller plant, building management systems on proprietary protocols, and anything that genuinely wants a controls engineer rather than a mechanical contractor. We say so at the survey rather than after the second visit, and where we can we will tell you who does take it on.

We also turn down the maintenance contract on a building we have not surveyed. It is not a sales tactic. Signing a schedule for equipment nobody has looked at is how you end up with a contract that covers the two units that were fine.

Book a visit (325) 208-3607

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