@fm-hassan
Facilities manager for a couple of Dubai buildings. Chillers, cooling towers and the bills that come with them.
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Fryer oil is a big running cost, and we're either changing it too often (waste) or leaving it too long (bad food — and I gather degraded oil is a food-safety issue, not just taste…
Getting my villa's distribution board upgraded, and the electrician offered two options: individual RCBOs on every circuit, or the older layout of one RCD covering a bank of MCBs.…
We're adding a garden room plus an outdoor kitchen/majlis a fair distance from the house — lights, sockets, a small split AC and a few appliances. - Do I run everything back to th…
Running a few units, I'm juggling separate contractors for AC, commercial kitchen equipment, chiller/FCU and general facilities, and the coordination is a headache. - Is it better…
Our large villa is on a three-phase supply and I don't really understand what that means versus single-phase, or why it matters. - What's the difference, in plain terms? - When do…
One of my restaurant's ovens cooks unevenly and takes longer to get to temperature, and the kitchen swears it's not them. I've read two likely causes: a worn door seal/gasket lett…
There's condensation (sweating) on the AC ducting in my ceiling void, and it's started marking the ceiling and dripping. Importantly this is not a condensate drain leak — it's the…
My café's commercial dishwasher/glasswasher has stopped cleaning properly — glasses come out filmy, spotted or greasy, not clean. Before I lose service and call an engineer, I wan…
From the how-many-tons thread I get that a "ton" is 12,000 BTU/h and that sizing is more than floor area. But I still can't picture how you'd actually estimate it for a real space…
I'm looking at renting in a Business Bay tower and want to go in eyes-open on the cooling. It's district cooling — a FCU fed by the building's chilled-water loop, not a split — an…
The walk-in cold room at my café is creeping warmer than it should — not failed, but not holding its temperature — and I'm nervous about losing stock and a hygiene check. Before I…
My AC has started switching on and off every few minutes — it runs briefly, cuts out, waits a bit, restarts, over and over (I gather this is called short-cycling). It still cools-…
Trying to decide whether to sign an annual maintenance contract for the apartment or just pay a company each time something breaks. I collect quotes like other people collect stam…
The indoor unit of my split AC has started dripping water — it's staining the wall below it. It's not constant, more when it's been running a while. Is this dangerous and what cau…
We're on district cooling (chilled water) in Abu Dhabi and lately there's a damp, musty smell every time the AC starts up. It fades after a while but it's unpleasant. Is this dang…
I manage a couple of buildings and in one of them the chilled-water riser pipes in the service shaft are sweating and dripping — there's water pooling at the bottom of the riser a…
Now the worst of the summer is easing I want to give the villa exterior a proper once-over before the cooler, occasionally wet months. I know the sun does damage over summer but I…
I'm putting a whole-building annual maintenance contract (AMC) out to tender and the bids are all over the place — some cheap, some triple, and genuinely hard to compare. - What s…
We run packaged rooftop AC units on a couple of small commercial buildings, and I want a proper preventive-maintenance (PM) schedule instead of reacting to breakdowns. - What shou…
I manage a building on a water-cooled chiller and I want to know whether the plant is genuinely running well or quietly wasting energy. People mention "delta-T" and "approach temp…
Looking at cooling options, I keep seeing "packaged" or "rooftop" units mentioned alongside splits and ducted. I get splits and ducted, but not where the packaged unit fits. - Wha…
Our water-cooled chiller setup has a cooling tower, and "water treatment" keeps appearing as a recurring cost line. Before I just keep paying it, I want to understand it: - What d…
I manage a building on district cooling and the bill has two parts: a consumption charge (for cooling used) and a big capacity / demand charge that's there regardless of usage. Ow…