Author: MaintenX

What is Indoor Air Quality?

Indoor air quality (IAQ) refers to the quality of the air inside facilities, as represented by concentrations of pollutants and thermal conditions. These conditions can affect the health, comfort, and performance of your building’s occupants.

What are the most common causes of indoor air quality problems?

The most common causes of indoor air quality problems in buildings include factors like:

• Not enough ventilation, lack of fresh outdoor air, or infiltration of contaminated air
• Poor upkeep of HVAC systems
• Dampness and moisture damage due to leaks, flooding, or high humidity

Why is indoor air quality important to building managers?

Buildings exist to protect people from the elements and support occupants’ activity. Buildings should never make people sick, cause them discomfort, or inhibit their ability to perform their duties. How efficiently a building functions is, in part, a measure of your building’s overall performance.

The growing spread of chemical pollutants in many commercial products, the inclination toward tighter building construction constraints, the bad habit of reduced ventilation to save on energy costs and management pressures to defer maintenance and other building services to reduce costs have all come together to cause air quality problems in countless buildings. Occupant complaints of odors, stale air and symptoms of illness or discomfort can also cause conflicts between occupants and building managers.

Want to know more about improving air quality? Call the experts at MaintenX today!

Every year, new equipment and facility development processes are restructured for more efficient energy consumption. Even with those tools, though, it can still be challenging for facility management to keep up with their comprehensive energy picture. Even if you’re meticulous about replacing your facility’s old equipment on time, you still might be missing out on many energy saving opportunities.

Energy Audit

An energy audit service can solve many of these problems, and often pays for itself over time. Setting one up is easy!

The process of an energy audit can include:

• Determining your facility’s average energy consumption over a set period as a benchmark
• Observing individual energy streams and how each of those streams contributes to your facility’s energy usage and costs
• Comparing your facility’s energy usage against that of similar facilities
• Exploring opportunities for more efficient facility asset investments

How to Schedule an Energy Audit

No matter your facility size or your particular energy goals, scheduling an energy audit is a simple process. You can contact MaintenX directly. Once you’ve submitted your audit request, a MaintenX representative will get back to you as soon as possible.

A thorough energy audit guarantees cost savings, but we can help you determine which level is best based on your facility profile. We’re happy to answer any questions you may have!

It can be easy to get frustrated by the many day-to-day tasks involved in maintaining a property. To succeed as a property manager, you’ll need to keep refining and modernizing your skillset. Here are some useful tips:

Make communication a key part of your strategy.

The first step in honing your maintenance game is to create templates. Templates simplify the communication process by decreasing the need to repeat the same steps over and over again.

Successful property managers do not drag their feet.

Effective property managers know how to get things done. They also need to be savvy and knowledgeable enough to know which parts of their work should take priority over other tasks. If you’re going into the industry, good work habits are essential.

Get up to speed.

Stay updated on changing rules and regulations, local rents, and other related trends. Property owners want to be sure that their property manager knows what they’re talking about.

Think towards the future.

Thanks to technology, the property management industry is changing rapidly. To keep up with the pace of change, make sure you adapt to and embrace these changes.

Have a long-term strategy.

Having a long-term strategy will help you stay focused and motivated.

Questions to ask yourself.

However you make a decision, stand by it. Any consequences should be dealt with as soon as possible.

Want to know more tips for property management? Call the experts at MaintenX today!

Add these helpful landscaping tips to your spring project plans to improve the appearance and health of your property while also increasing the value of your home or facility.

Clean Up, Clean Up!

The very first thing you can do to spruce up your property is to prepare for any spring landscaping project by first simply cleaning up the lawn, flower beds and garden area. Pick up all the branches that may have fallen around your lawn during the winter or a recent storm, rake any leaves and pick up debris that may be on the lawn, weed and declutter the garden or flower beds, and don’t forget to clean up the area you are preparing to work with.

Plant and Feed

For all your plants and garden vegetables, make sure that the soil is in tip-top condition for early spring planting. We advise a proper soil test before you begin planting anything to make sure you know what nutrients the soil lacks. Once you know what your soil needs, go to your local nursery and have a professional advise you on what to add to prime your lawn and garden for spring and summer success.

Weed the Garden

If you would like to use a natural non-selective weed control, then try using a vinegar or citrus oil-based product. Be very careful not to spray any desirable plants though.

Want to know more about proper lawn care? Call MaintenX today!

Your facility probably has some form of recycling program already in place. However, that program might not be the right fit for the way your facility operates.  Many facility managers and business owners erroneously think that they don’t have the resources or money to properly increase or augment their facility’s current recycling program. But that is often false! Simple steps can be taken to really rev up your facility’s current recycling program. It may even help save your business a good chunk of change in the process. Here are some tips to increase your facility’s recycling numbers:

Collect More Types of Recyclables

In addition to recycling paper, there are lots of other waste items your facility can be diverting from local landfills. Recycling goes way beyond paper, aluminum, and glass bottles. Computers, cell phones, and other e-waste are just a few examples of the vast number and type of materials that recycling facilities reclaim and repurpose. We suggest conducting a full and detailed facility waste audit to help gain more insight into all the materials in your facility that are currently being trashed and whether some of these items could be recycled instead.

Separate Organics

If your facility isn’t collecting food waste already, you’re doing it wrong! Composting programs are very simple to set up and can not only save the landfill from taking this waste, they can be used to improve the soil and vegetation outside your facility.

Good maintenance of your facility’s assets helps catch common problems before they become bigger ones, can help to extend the working life of your facility’s expensive machines and help to prevent future unexpected asset breakdowns. Watch out for these warning signs to save your organization time and money in the future.

Increased Operator Need

Most facility assets are set up to run autonomously. If you see that your operators are always fiddling with the same piece of equipment, that machine may need maintenance. Fix the issues and your downtime will be heavily reduced and future costly breakdowns can be prevented.

Asset Usage

If you have found an increase in materials being used, then you may have a problem on your hands. A properly operating piece of facility equipment won’t just give you savings by lowering the instances of asset downtime, but it will also save your facility budget on the extra costs of materials used.

Strange Sounds

Odd or loud sounds can be a strong indication of anything from a worn-out bearing to a bad gearbox. If your employees start to hear any unfamiliar or strange noises coming from your facility’s machines, this is a clear sign that it is in need of service. Heed the warning and have the machine looked at by a trained repair expert. This could save you a lot of money and headache-inducing downtime in the future.

Want to know more about your maintenance needs? Call the experts at MaintenX today!

Going paperless is a great idea for facility managers who want to go green while saving their organization money. But before you make the jump, you should take time to plan out how going paperless will affect your organization.

Set Goals

But how will you know when you’ve achieved paperlessness? It’s vital to outline some metrics before implementing your document management software.

Ask yourself how long it will take for your staff to process an invoice, and record how much time your workers save with the new document management system.

Prioritize

You simply can’t address every single part of facility and organization operations all at once. Save yourself and your employees a big, confusing mess by prioritizing. Which of your processes needs the biggest overhaul?

Improving Processes

You must examine your existing procedures before you figure out what to keep and what to discard. Some processes are monotonous, but making them electronic won’t necessarily increase effectiveness.

Make a Plan to Scan

There are many different ways to get to paperless, but document scanning is a key tool. To maximize time efficiency with document scanning, you might try first scanning only the current documents.

When scanning documents, it’s imperative to leave plenty of space to organize the files. You will also want to be very careful with removing staples and paperclips before scanning documents.

Today’s facilities create a ton of data every day. With the aid of advanced systems, maintenance staff can speedily measure and track facility health with the click of a mouse.

Having the real-time status of every piece of equipment at your fingertips is a powerful tool. Your facility’s HVAC system information is no different. But it’s important to know how to assess the information it provides you.

Diagnosing Trouble

It’s important to do a daily review all of the alerts in your facility’s BAS and carefully review the summary pages of vital building systems for danger signs. Depending on the sensitivity of the relevant sensors, there are many conditions that may present as poor HVAC performance without triggering an alert.

Establishing a detailed diagnostic plan can take a long time, but it is vital to solving problems rapidly. The longer you have been working with a facility’s particular systems, the better and easier this task will be.

Logging Problems

One simple tool that can help facility managers and staff with the HVAC problems they have is a diagnostic history log.

Using diagnostic tools gives you a central place for all common HVAC problems, which should include detailed notes about specific work performed. This allows new operations employees the ability to instantly get up-to-speed by simply looking over the historical record of work performed on any of your facility’s HVAC components.

Want to know more about diagnosing Energy waste? Call MaintenX today!

For facility managers who want to lower costs, energy information systems (EIS) might be the answer. EIS is an old concept. It began with spreadsheets developed after the energy crisis in the 1970s. In the end, those initial efforts at collating energy information became computerized. The technology continued developing into the energy information systems of the present.  

EIS goes by many names. Facility managers are usually acquainted with utility tracking systems and energy accounting systems; all of these are types of energy information systems.

What is Energy Information Systems?

Energy Information Systems (EIS) is the collective term for the software, data acquisition hardware, and communication systems used to store, log, and display a facility’s energy records.

Metering data is very important to EIS. An energy information system gives facility managers and business owners daily, hourly or sub-hourly meter data, complete with graphical and analytical stats. The data is chiefly attained from a facility’s electricity and gas meters, but it can also use system-level data.

Benefits of Energy Information Systems

Energy Information Systems offers facility managers many benefits. Perhaps the most significant one is the ability to record how and where energy and resources are being used.

The benefits most frequently reported about Energy Information Systems:

• Recognizing efficiency opportunities
• Tracking performance
• Managing demand charges
• Authenticating utility bills
• Measuring project-specific savings
• Collecting and storing short and long-term data to create and track energy goals

An Energy Information System can help facility managers save their organization money and energy by simplifying facility processes.

Once winter is gone, it’s time for you to go out and look for signs of seasonal damage. As the weather starts to warm up, it’s vital check for damage and to make a plan to get your yard ready for springtime.

Trees and Shrubs

Trees and shrubs bear the brunt of snowfall damage. Look around your property for any branches that are broken or damaged. Prune these damaged parts or have them removed by a professional service.

Care for the Lawn

To reinvigorate soil, give your lawn a deep daily watering. Check for brown patches in your lawn. Winter snowfall can kill grass. Check to see if there is any green tissue beginning to emerge. If you find green tissue, that’s a sign that the brown area will probably recuperate. If not, and other areas of the lawn are doing much better, it’s time to make a lawn repair action plan. To repair the damaged area, rake up as much of the dead grass as you can. Adding a light layer of topsoil will help increase the chances of success when your new seedlings begin to grow.

Investing time in a full inspection of potential weather harm created by the unforgiving conditions of winter can locate small trouble areas and give you some remedies to stave off bigger problems later. Your lawn care and landscape professional can also help you make sure the trouble areas are fixed before you are ready for summer fun.