Twenty trades, twenty worked examples

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Canopy and duct degrease. This is the one that’s a fire and insurance issue, not just a cleanliness one. Overdue.
• Cool room door seals. Cheap part, and a failing seal makes the compressor run permanently to hold temperature. You’re paying for it in power right now.
• The warm display fridge. Either a dirty condenser or it’s losing gas. Worth knowing which before summer.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Plus incidental repairs on gear this age: budget $1,500–4,000.

Coming in five years

• Cool room compressor — $2,800–5,500. At ten years and coastal, this is a when.
• Rooftop AC replacement — $5,500–12,000. Coastal coils run a 5–8 year cycle, not 10–12.
• Refrigerant — if the cool room is R-404A, retrofit is $2,500–4,500 and gas is climbing hard.

Quietly costing you money

That salt-affected condenser and the failing door seals mean the cool room runs longer to hold the same temperature. On a cool room that’s typically $300–700 a year in power you’d stop paying with a service and a set of seals.

What I’d do first

1. Canopy degrease — it’s the compliance and insurance one
2. Cool room seals and service
3. Find out the cool room’s refrigerant before you budget anything else

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Your cool room is too cold. Most florists run 2–4°C because that’s what the fridge came set to. Cut flowers do better at 4–6°C with humidity up. Too cold damages petals on tropicals and costs you more to run.
• No humidity management. A cool room drying your stock out is shortening vase life, which shortens the life of your reputation.
• Door seal on the display fridge. Cheap fix, immediate power saving.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Cool room compressor — $2,800–5,500 if it’s an older unit
• Display fridge — usually replaced whole rather than repaired: $1,800–4,500
• Refrigerant — older cool rooms on phase-down gas will get expensive to top up

Quietly costing you money

Two things, both invisible. Running 2°C colder than you need costs roughly 5–8% more energy per degree. And stock loss from dry air — if you’re binning flowers before they sell, that’s a humidity problem, not a supplier problem.

What I’d do first

1. Get the cool room temperature and humidity set for flowers, not for food
2. Service and calibrate — most florist cool rooms have never had a gauge on them
3. Seals on the display fridge

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Batch freezer condenser. Running hot means longer batch times, softer product, and a compressor working itself to death. This is the single most expensive machine in the shop.
• Display cabinet cycling. If temperature swings even a couple of degrees, you get ice crystals and grainy texture. You’ll taste it before you measure it — and so will customers.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Batch freezer compressor — $2,800–5,500, and you’re shut while it’s out
• Display cabinet — $4,000–12,000 depending on format
• Split system upsize — if it can’t hold the room in February it never will: $2,200–4,000

Quietly costing you money

Texture is a temperature problem. Product that goes grainy or icy gets discounted or binned, and most operators blame the recipe. A cabinet holding a stable temperature is a quality control tool you already own — it just isn’t calibrated.

What I’d do first

1. Clean the batch freezer condenser, then keep it monthly
2. Calibrate and log the display cabinet for a week — see how much it actually swings
3. Get the split sized properly before next summer, not during it

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• The retarder-prover is your recipe. If it drifts overnight, the morning’s dough is wrong — over-proved, under-proved, inconsistent crumb. Most bakers chase this through flour, water and yeast for months without ever putting a logger in the cabinet.
• Humidity control. Dry proving gives you skin on the dough. That’s not a technique problem.
• The split fighting oven heat. Undersized units in bakeries run flat out and die early.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Retarder-prover — $6,000–15,000 to replace. Service it properly and you push that out years.
• Cool room compressor — $2,800–5,500
• Split system replacement, sized correctly — $2,200–4,500

Quietly costing you money

Inconsistent product. Every batch that doesn’t come out right is flour, labour, and an oven cycle you’ve already paid for. If your consistency wanders with the seasons, that’s a plant problem wearing a recipe costume.

What I’d do first

1. Put a data logger in the retarder-prover for a week — settle the argument with numbers
2. Calibrate, then service
3. Cool room seals

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Glycol system. Low glycol and a drifting bath temperature means warm beer at the tap and foam in the glass. On a Friday night that’s not a maintenance issue, it’s a night’s takings and a room that empties.
• Ice machine scale. Output drops quietly until a busy night when you run out. Descale and service.
• Split filters. A packed venue in summer with loaded filters is how you end up with people drinking outside.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Glycol chiller — $6,000–14,000
• Cool room compressor — $2,800–5,500
• Ice machine — $4,000–9,000
• Split replacement — $5,000–9,000 for the pair

Quietly costing you money

Foam is spillage. A poorly chilled line pours 10–20% waste on every keg, every night. That’s beer you bought and poured down the drain, and it’s the cheapest problem on this list to fix.

What I’d do first

1. Glycol system — level, bath temp, line balance
2. Descale the ice machine and put it on a quarterly cycle
3. Filters in both splits before summer

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• The cool room is 1.5°C too warm. Your temperature records say you’re compliant. A calibrated gauge says otherwise. That gap is a food safety problem and a shelf-life problem at the same time.
• Ice on the freezer evaporator. Defrost cycle isn’t clearing. That’s a cheap fix now and a compressor later.
• Display curtain not sealing overnight. You’re refrigerating the shop.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Cool room compressor — $2,800–5,500
• Freezer compressor — $3,200–6,000
• Display cabinet — $6,000–14,000

Quietly costing you money

Shelf life is temperature. Every degree above spec shortens how long product holds. If you’re marking down or binning at the end of the week, some of that is your cool room, not your ordering. And an iced-up evaporator can add 20–30% to that freezer’s running cost.

What I’d do first

1. Calibrate everything against a reference — know what your records actually mean
2. Sort the freezer defrost cycle
3. Display curtain, used every night

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Four perished door seals. Every one is a permanent leak of cold air into your shop. The compressor never gets a break, and you’re paying for it every hour you’re open.
• Condenser is filthy. Restricted airflow means high head pressure, which is the fastest route to a dead compressor.
• Noisy fan motor. Replace it for a couple of hundred now or replace the whole evaporator later.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Walk-in compressor — $2,800–5,500
• Reach-in replacement — $1,800–4,500 each, usually replaced not repaired
• Door and frame refurbishment — $2,000–5,000 across six doors

Quietly costing you money

This is the big one for you. A bottle shop’s refrigeration is its single largest power draw, and four failed seals plus a blocked condenser can add $1,500–3,000 a year to the bill. The seals cost under a grand. That’s the whole argument.

What I’d do first

1. All four seals — fastest payback of anything on this list
2. Condenser clean and full service
3. That fan motor before it takes the coil with it

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• The blast chiller isn’t hitting its curve. Your food safety plan almost certainly specifies cooling from 60°C to 21°C then to 5°C inside set times. If the machine can’t do it, you’re non-compliant on every batch, and no one has told you because nothing has visibly broken.
• Finished-goods cool room cycling harder than the raw room. Same size, same load — that difference is a fault developing.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Blast chiller compressor — $4,000–8,000
• Cool room compressors — $2,800–5,500 each
• Freezer compressor — $3,200–6,000

Quietly costing you money

A blast chiller that misses its curve is a recall waiting to happen. But before that, it’s slower throughput — batches occupying the machine longer than planned, which caps how much you can produce in a day. That’s a revenue ceiling created by a service issue.

What I’d do first

1. Verify the blast chiller against its cooling curve, documented
2. Find out why the finished-goods room is working harder than its twin
3. Filters and service on both splits

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Capacity, not condition. Your units are healthy. They’re just too small. Twenty people working hard in a sealed room put out roughly the heat of twenty 100W heaters — that load was never in the original sizing, because the fitout was specced on floor area.
• Fresh air. Stuffiness by mid-class is a ventilation issue, not a cooling one, and no amount of extra cooling fixes it.
• Filters. Heavy occupancy loads filters far faster than a normal commercial space.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Additional capacity — $3,000–7,000 to add a head sized for actual class load
• Mechanical fresh air — $2,500–6,000
• Replacement of existing units — $2,200–4,000 each

Quietly costing you money

A hot class is a cancelled membership. You won’t get a complaint — you’ll get a quiet drop-off in the 6pm summer classes and no explanation. Meanwhile the undersized units run at 100% all summer, which is both the most expensive way to run them and the fastest way to kill them.

What I’d do first

1. Get the actual heat load calculated for a full class, not the floor area
2. Quarterly filters from now on
3. Decide on fresh air before you spend on more cooling

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Filters are the whole story here. A gym loads filters faster than almost any commercial space — dust, chalk, skin, fibres from mats and clothing. Yours are choked, which is why two heads feel weak. That’s not a fault, it’s neglect with a fault’s symptoms.
• Ventilation undersized. High-intensity classes need air changes, not just cooling.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Multi-split replacement — $8,000–16,000
• Ventilation upgrade — $3,000–8,000
• Individual head replacement — $1,800–3,200 each

Quietly costing you money

Choked filters cost about 5–15% in efficiency and force the system to run longer for the same result. Across a gym running twelve hours a day that’s real money, and it’s the cheapest fix in this document — most of it your own staff could do monthly if someone showed them how.

What I’d do first

1. Full filter service, then show your staff the monthly routine
2. Recheck the two weak heads once filters are clear — the fault may disappear
3. Assess ventilation against actual class sizes

What you’ve got

Needs attention now

• Humidity is running the room, and nothing is running humidity. You’re holding temperature and letting humidity land wherever it lands. That’s the difference between a class that feels right and one that feels like drowning — and it’s the variable your regulars actually judge you on.
• Purge time between classes. If the room hasn’t cleared, class two starts in class one’s air.
• Moisture everywhere. This building is a corrosion environment. Everything metal in it is ageing faster than it would anywhere else on this list, including the equipment keeping it warm.

Your service year

What it costs — next 12 months

Coming in five years

• Heating plant replacement — $12,000–30,000 and this environment shortens its life
• Humidification system — $4,000–12,000
• Ventilation upgrade — $5,000–12,000
• Everything corrodes early. Budget a 5–7 year cycle on anything with a coil, not 10–12.

Quietly costing you money

Corrosion is eating your capital faster than your accountant thinks it is. Depreciation schedules assume normal service life. A hot, wet room doesn’t give you one. Quarterly inspection and treatment costs a few hundred and buys years.

What I’d do first

1. Get humidity under actual control, measured and set — this is the class experience
2. Descale the humidifier and put it on a weekly check
3. Start a corrosion inspection cycle now, before it’s replacement instead of treatment