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.

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.