Is an annual chiller maintenance contract worth it for a villa?

For a multi-FCU villa, a contract usually pays off — not because of the per-visit price, but because scheduled coil/drain servicing prevents the expensive failures (water damage from blocked drains, a seized FCU motor in August). For a single apartment split it's often not worth it. The more units and the more you'd suffer from downtime, the more a contract makes sense. For most villas, a chiller servicing contract that covers the annual coil clean and gas check pays for itself in one avoided breakdown.

If you do sign one, read what "maintenance" covers. Some exclude gas, spare parts and anything on the actual chiller plant — so you're really only paying for FCU filter visits. Get the exclusions in writing.

Pinning this — great checklist forming here. If anyone has a redacted AMC quote they can share (remove company name/price), it'd help others compare coverage.

One way to judge whether an AMC is actually earning its money: does the contractor measure and report the plant's performance, or just show up? There's a newer thread on reading a chiller's delta-T and approach temperature — the numbers a good AMC should be trending so you catch fouling/low-delta-T before the bill climbs. A contract that includes that monitoring is worth far more than one that's just a call-out plan.