14 Apr Superintendent Checklist
Jump to: Mechanical Room Walkthrough • Rooftop Inspection • Parking Garage
Written by Al Landry
A building superintendent is vital to the success of a property. Superintendents are a manager’s right arm, and their role in the prevention or detection of equipment failures is critical to ensuring that downtime with equipment is avoided.
Superintendents are responsible for daily equipment checks and keeping proper records of their findings. Managers should periodically check the superintendents’ logbooks and ensure that inspections are completed. Additionally, management companies going through the ACMO 2000 certification process will want to ensure that logbooks from inspections are kept and filed. An auditor completing the certification process will check for this item during a site audit.
Completing regular inspections will help a superintendent become familiar with the building and determine what is and is not typical for operations. This can help reduce service calls for issues that aren’t an issue or help the superintendent differentiate between an urgent or non-urgent repair. Suppose regular temperature readings for the domestic hot water tanks are being completed. In that case, you could be alerted to possible issues before receiving the influx of resident phone calls with complaints, or at a minimum, you will have an idea of when the problem started. Superintendents should focus on completing regular inspections in three main areas, the mechanical room, parking garage, and rooftop and consider the points below in each location.
Mechanical Room Walkthrough
First, complete an overall visual inspection of the space. Are there any noticeable water leaks coming from any of the boilers, pumps, or relief valves? Next, you will want to conduct an audible inspection. Listen for any unusual noises but remember, all equipment makes noise. Once you are used to the normal operating sounds of the equipment, you will start to notice anything that is out of the ordinary, such as squealing pumps, belts, noisy motor bearings, or very loud chiller operation.
Ensure that you check the domestic hot water tanks; they should be reading between 120-140°F; temperatures outside this range indicate a systemic issue requiring attention. Typically, if the DHW temp is too low or too high, building residents will likely have already reported this as their in-suite water supply would be unusually high or low depending upon the issue.
Check the temperature supply and return water to the building loop and record the reading. If it is winter, what is the heating loop temperature, and in the summer, what is the chilled water temperature? If it is a warmer day, you can expect the loop temperature to be lower, and if it is a cold day, the temperature will be higher. In the winter, a typical temperature range for the heating loop would be between 120-180F, and a standard chilled water temperature would be around 45F. Every building is different, and it would benefit the superintendent to know the setpoints for heating and cooling to determine if there is any deviation from the setpoint.
When inspecting either the boilers or chiller (seasonally dependent), please take note of any alarms present on them. If there are alarms sounding, do you understand what they mean?
It will become a matter of experience to determine what alarms can be reset and what alarms require attention from a technician. For example, if you had a power outage overnight, the sounding alarm could be for a ‘loss of power,’ and a simple reset of the alarm may be all that is required. Again, this will be a matter of comfort and experience and should be discussed with your technician, operations manager, and property management on what they are comfortable with having the Superintendent undertake. However, if there is uncertainty or doubt, don’t reset anything and place a service call.
Boiler and chiller alarms typically mean that the unit is not working, pending acknowledgment of the alarm and potential remediation of whatever issue has caused the alarm. Therefore, it wouldn’t be unusual for your residents to feel cold if a boiler has gone into alarm or warm if a chiller is in alarm.
All chiller rooms have a refrigerant monitor; check the monitor to see if it is reading 0ppmm (parts per million), indicating that there are no refrigerant leaks. If the monitor is not reading 0ppm, you have an issue, and the alarm should be sounding. The system can go into alarm mode due to malfunction and not necessarily a refrigerant leak. Therefore, it is helpful to know why the monitor is in alarm to determine the urgency behind placing a service call.
The overall temperature in both the mechanical and chiller rooms is important. A too hot space can cause equipment to malfunction or damage circuit boards. A cold room may indicate that a unit heater is not working, or an outdoor air damper is stuck in an open position due to a sticking damper assembly or a failed actuator. If there is a chiller or a sprinkler line in this area with residual water inside, these components mustn’t freeze. In the summer, if exhaust fans and outdoor dampers are being used to keep the mechanical room cool, they must be in good working operation.
It is crucial to ensure a temperature control system inside the elevator mechanical room. Keeping the temperature cool in this space is critical to ensure that the equipment operates at peak performance. An elevator room that is too hot can cause circuit boards to fail, affecting the elevator’s performance, possibly even failure, which would cause the elevator to be taken out of service.
Rooftop Inspection
When you are on the rooftop, you will want to inspect the cooling tower first, looking to see if any visible water leaks are coming from the tower. There are many possible causes for water to leak from the tower, and usually, a service technician would need to be called to investigate water leaks. If you see a leak, it could signal that the float in the sump has been poorly adjusted, causing the fill valve to stay open despite sufficient water in the sump. There could also be water leaking from a supply line or fitting, or the tower itself may be corroding and leaking.
Take note of the inlet and outlet temperatures; these can generally be found on thermometers located on the inlet and outlet piping of the tower. If not, the temperature on the inlet and outlet piping of the chiller’s condenser will accurately represent the tower inlet and outlet values.
If the temperatures are abnormally high, look to see if the tower fan(s) are operating and are there any alarms on the tower VFD if the fans are not running. This information will help with dispatching a service call. If the tower temperatures are running high, it could indicate issues, such as the fan motor/VFD drive offline, plugged sump strainer, or plugged nozzles. The chiller operation could become compromised, and a service call would have to be placed.
Next up are the exhaust fans; look to see if they are operating or noisy. If they are, this could indicate an issue with the bearings.
Make-up air units are another essential piece of equipment that shouldn’t ever be overlooked. You will want to ensure that they are continuously operating and that the fan is running. When walking down the resident corridors, ask yourself if the temperature is comfortable or if any lingering odours are present. The building ventilation and the MUA system need to work together to maintain the building pressure. Too much MUA in a building and noise becomes a common complaint; too little MUA and smells in the hallways are more prevalent. The MUA needs to ensure the hallways are pressurized, which helps keep cooking odours localized to each suite. If you start receiving complaints from residents that odours are present in the hallways, this could indicate a problem with the MUAs.
Parking Garage
When inspecting the parking garage, ensure adequate ventilation to prevent a build-up of chemicals or fumes generated from vehicles. Also, as the garage builds up heat over the summer, it will feel uncomfortable, another reason to ensure adequate ventilation.
Garage exhaust fans will be on CO monitors, and when there are high levels of CO in the garage, they will go into alarm mode. Superintendents should check that the fans cycle on and off as needed so that when high levels of CO are detected, the fans turn on. Every building is different, and the exhaust fan operation should be reviewed with your technician to ensure there is an understanding of how they work, what regular operation of the system looks like, and what would need to be going wrong to place a service call. The Corporations HVAC provider can maintain CO detectors, or some life safety companies will include the maintenance/inspection of the CO detectors in their contract.
Some parking garages are heated, and some are not. If the garage isn’t heated, ask yourself what the temperature in the garage is and is it typical for the space. If it is heated and the space is freezing, you know you have a problem. Often, unit heaters are installed for sprinkler systems or water lines that are present in the garage. If these units go offline, you want to closely monitor the temperature in this area until you can arrange a service call to ensure that the pipes in this area do not freeze.
If a sprinkler head bursts, the sprinkler system for the entire garage and area will go off, and potentially you can be looking at extensive damage to locker rooms in this area.
If a unit heater goes down in the winter months, you will want to arrange a service call immediately to prevent further issues.
Most condominiums have sump pumps in the garage, and regular testing of the pumps is needed to ensure they are working. During your garage inspection, if you notice water pooling where the sump is located, that is a definite sign that the pumps aren’t working. The pumps will default in operation to auto mode, but to manually test that they are working, you will want to turn the pumps to hand mode and hear if the pumps turn on. A faulty sump pump could contribute to flooding if the water couldn’t be pumped away during a storm, which would warrant a service call.
The last space in the parking garage that you want to inspect is the electrical room. Checking the temperature of the space is the main task for this space. Typically, electrical rooms are kept in between room temp and 90°F. Often an exhaust fan will exhaust hot air out of the electrical room if it is too warm as electrical enclosures can produce significant amounts of heat. The heat needs to be controlled by exhausting hot air and bringing outdoor air in or mechanical cooling. An electrical room that is too hot can cause equipment to overheat and malfunction, jeopardizing the building’s power supply. Cold temperatures do not pose a significant concern for this space.
As a building superintendent becomes more familiar with the building, they will understand how it operates under normal conditions. Experience and familiarity will go a long way in determining if there is an actual issue and how best to address it.
Naylor Professional Superintendent Training
Naylor is pleased to offer superintendent training, which is ideal for superintendents who are new to a building or role, to receive direct hands-on training from one of our senior technicians specific to their building mechanics. Don’t hesitate to contact Kelly Halkett at khalkett@naylorbp.com for more details on this training or to schedule it.
All building personnel must remember that when in doubt about any mechanical issue, do not try to repair the equipment or fix the problem independently. Instead, reach out for assistance. Naylor operations managers and technicians are always available to answer your questions or concerns, and they will direct you on how to best handle the situation
Al Landry is an Operations Manager with Naylor, with over 20 years of experience working in the field as an HVAC technician. While in the field, Al took great satisfaction in helping property managers to understand the operation of their building systems and enjoyed working with them to make sure they could identify minor problems before they became major problems.
