Published with permission from Brady Services.
Does your organization perform preventative maintenance on its boilers and industrial burners on a regular basis? If it doesn’t, you may want to consider adding it into your facility’s maintenance plan. Regularly scheduled preventative maintenance on your heating system components can help ensure that your equipment is performing efficiently and reliably for years to come.
Let’s start with the basics.
Preventative maintenance is a standardized approach to maintaining your heating equipment with scheduled inspections and adjustments. These inspections address maintenance needs on a systematic schedule and are based on industry standards and manufacturers recommendations. As part of a preventative maintenance program, the components subject to wear on your boiler or burner are inspected and depending on your application, additional tests may be performed on items such as safety, operating controls, relief valves, and combustion efficiency.
What are the benefits of preventative maintenance?
Regular boiler maintenance can increase equipment lifespan, improve reliability, minimize repair cost and minimize downtime. Your equipment will also perform more efficiently if maintained properly reducing energy costs. Research from the FEMP O&M Guide (2004) shows that regular maintenance can reduce energy consumption from 5-20%. Continued use of damaged or faulty equipment can also lead to unsafe operating conditions and operating environment. Regular maintenance inspections can help ensure your staff is working in the safest environment possible.
Still thinking about skipping regular preventative maintenance on your heating equipment?
Research from the FEMP O&M Guide (July 2004) has shown that regular maintenance can cut down on the number of unexpected breakdowns by 70-75%, reduces the overall cost of those breakdowns and reduces the length of downtime by 35-45%. What would the financial impact be from taking your steam plant or production burners offline to perform unscheduled repair work? To understand the true cost of downtime you must also include costs of lost goods and productivity, as well as the cost to bring in rental equipment, rush delivery on parts, and overtime rates from the service company in order to reduce the time your system is offline.
Regularly scheduled preventative maintenance can also minimize the potential cost and impact from these failures before they lead to larger, more costly issues. What could have been a $500 repair performed during a scheduled maintenance inspection could progress into a $50,000 emergency shut down next month. By implementing a preventative maintenance program, facility managers can rest assured knowing minor repairs don’t turn into catastrophic failures which means more reliable up-time for your production or facility.
So, if you haven’t considered adding boiler or burner maintenance to your facility maintenance plan, or if you’re thinking about cutting it from your budget, you may want to review the true cost of not maintaining your heating system equipment.
Are you looking for a preventative maintenance service provider for your heating system? Call us today at 502.499.7000.