Refrigeration Maintenance Contracts

What is a refrigeration maintenance contract?

A refrigeration maintenance contract is an agreement for an engineer to visit your site on a set schedule to check, clean and test your refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, and to write up the leak checks the F-gas rules ask for. Climate Flow Limited offers refrigeration maintenance contracts to restaurants, pubs, shops, schools, gyms and other businesses in London and surrounding areas.

The work is planned preventive maintenance (PPM): routine visits booked in advance to find wear and faults before they turn into a breakdown, instead of waiting for something to fail. Regular checks can reduce the chance of a fridge or cold room failing in the middle of service. No visit schedule removes that chance altogether.

What equipment can a maintenance contract cover?

One contract can cover the commercial refrigeration and air conditioning on a site:

• cold rooms, freezer rooms and walk-in chillers, the same equipment as our cold room installation work;
• cellar coolers, which hold a pub or bar cellar at a set temperature for kegs and casks (see cellar cooler installation);
• display and upright fridges and freezers, and glass-door multideck chillers (a multideck is a display chiller with several shelves stacked one above another);
• ice machines, and blast chillers, which cool cooked food quickly before it goes into storage;
• air conditioning: split, multi-split, ducted, cassette and VRF/VRV systems. VRF (variable refrigerant flow) means one outdoor unit serving many indoor units.

What does a planned maintenance visit include?

The exact list is agreed per site after a survey. A typical visit covers the following.

Refrigeration

• Leak check on the refrigerant circuit, logged with the date and result
• Condenser coil and fans cleaned (the condenser coil is the finned coil that gives off the heat taken out of the cabinet or room)
• Evaporator, drain line and defrost checked (the evaporator is the cold coil inside the cabinet or room; defrost is the timed cycle that melts the ice that builds up on it)
• Door seals, hinges and strip curtains
• Cabinet and room temperatures checked against the controller setting
• Controller settings and alarms
• Electrical connections and running checks

Air conditioning

• Filters cleaned or replaced
• Indoor unit coils, fans and condensate drains cleaned and tested
• Outdoor unit coil cleaned and airflow checked
• Leak check where the system is in scope of the F-gas rules
• Air temperatures measured at the indoor units
• Controls and error history checked

Which F-gas duties does a maintenance contract help with?

Where your equipment holds a fluorinated gas (F gas) refrigerant, the UK rules on leak checks, records and qualifications sit in the Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases Regulations 2015. GOV.UK guidance on checking F gas equipment for leaks says responsibility for stopping leaks is shared between the people who use the equipment and the service technicians who install, maintain or dispose of it. A contract does not move your duty to the contractor. It gives you an engineer who carries out the checks and writes them down.

• How often equipment must be leak checked depends on how much gas it holds, measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent: from at least once every 12 months for smaller systems in scope to at least every 3 months for the largest. The GOV.UK table gives the threshold for each interval.
• Fitting an automatic leak detection system lets you double the time allowed between leak checks. Equipment holding F gas equivalent to 500 tonnes or more of carbon dioxide must have one fitted.
• If a check finds a leak, it must be repaired as soon as possible and the system tested again within a month to confirm the repair worked.

GOV.UK guidance on the qualifications required to work on F gas equipment says anyone who services, maintains or leak checks it must hold their own qualification, and that working on it without one is against the law. Climate Flow is F-Gas certified.

What records should a maintenance contract leave you with?

For equipment in scope, GOV.UK guidance on how to record F gas in equipment you own or service says records must be kept for 5 years. They cover:

• the type and quantity of gas in the equipment when it was installed;
• gas added during maintenance;
• the dates and results of all mandatory leak checks;
• the name, address and certification details of any company used to install, service or decommission it.

The operator keeps these records. A maintenance contractor can supply the entries for each visit, so the log stays complete.

Why does a fridge that runs warm matter?

A fridge or cold room that drifts warm is a food safety problem as well as an equipment one. GOV.UK food hygiene guidance on chilling and freezing says chilled food must be kept at 8°C or below, a legal requirement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and advises setting fridges to 5°C or below. Checking temperatures against the controller on each visit helps catch a cabinet that is starting to struggle. It does not replace your own temperature records.

How often are maintenance visits?

There is no single right number of visits. The schedule is agreed per site after a survey, based on the equipment, how hard it works and the legal leak-check interval for each system, which sets the minimum for leak checks.

1. Survey. An engineer lists the refrigeration and air conditioning on site and notes its condition.
2. Schedule. We agree which equipment is covered and when visits happen, planned around your trading or opening hours.
3. Visits. Each visit follows the agreed checklist, and any fault found is reported to you with what it needs.
4. Records. Leak-check dates and results, and any gas added, are written up for your F-gas records.

What happens if something breaks down between visits?

Planned visits can reduce breakdowns, but they cannot prevent every one. When a fault cannot wait for the next visit, Climate Flow offers 24/7 emergency callouts for refrigeration and air conditioning.

A maintenance job we have done

At Energie Fitness Gym we carried out VRF air conditioning maintenance on the indoor and outdoor units. The case study linked above has the details.

Arrange a refrigeration maintenance contract

Climate Flow Limited, 2 Engineers Way, Wembley, London HA9 0JS, offers refrigeration maintenance contracts across London and surrounding areas, alongside the installation and repair work on our commercial refrigeration services page. Call 020 3488 5452 or request a quote.

This guide is general information, not a survey or a quote for your site; every system is different, so an engineer needs to see yours before any work is priced.