Guide
Industrial refrigeration maintenance: what a contract should cover
Updated
A maintenance contract buys three separate things: planned visits, a response promise, and the paperwork that proves your statutory duties were met. Most disputes come from assuming one of them included another.
What planned visits should cover
- Running conditions recorded, not ticked: suction and discharge pressures, superheat and subcooling, temperatures against setpoint, run hours.
- Condensers and evaporators cleaned, airflow checked, fans and defrost operation verified.
- Controls, safety cut-outs and alarms tested, and the alarm route confirmed with somebody who will actually answer at 3am.
- Doors, curtains, seals and insulation on cold rooms, which is where a surprising share of energy and capacity is lost.
- Oil level and condition, filters and driers, and the state of the compressor as recorded rather than assumed.
- The statutory leak check where one falls due in the visit window, with the result recorded in your F gas records.
What a contract does not do
A maintenance contract does not transfer your duties as operator. You still hold the record keeping obligations for F gas, and you still need to be able to show the Environment Agency the certificate numbers of the companies who worked on the plant. Nor is refrigeration exempt from general work equipment law: HSE requires work equipment to be maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair (PUWER).
Where pressure systems law comes in
Smaller refrigeration plant sits outside the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations 2000: Schedule 1 excepts any vapour compression refrigeration system whose compressor drive motors, including standby motors, have a total installed power not exceeding 25kW (legislation.gov.uk). Above that installed power the exception does not apply, and a written scheme of examination question arises. Ammonia plant brings its own additional duties. Neither is a question to settle from a web page: put it to a competent person for your specific system.
How to buy response, not hope
- Define the response clock. Hours from the call, not from when the engineer sets off, and state what counts as a critical failure.
- Ask what is stocked. A four hour response with a two week part is a four hour visit, not a four hour fix.
- Separate contract labour from breakdown labour. Get the out-of-hours rate in writing before you need it.
- Ask for the reports in a form you can file. Your F gas records have to survive five years and an inspection.