Things to consider when restarting your equipment post COVID-19 shutdown
With COVID-19 unfortunately temporarily closing the doors of many businesses, there are some important things to consider when reopening and restarting your equipment. One of the key potential issues that we need to recognise is that there may be an increased risk of equipment failure when starting up equipment that has been non-operational for a period of time. The reason for this varies but when it comes to air conditioning, refrigeration and electrical items start-up failures may arise due to:
- Leaks can occur during periods of non-operation. Firstly any leak will not be noticed early and by the time you start up again there could be a total loss of refrigerant/oil. Secondly leaks are more likely as air conditioning and refrigeration systems will see different internal pressures when they are sitting at ambient temperatures as opposed to the temperatures and pressures they are at when in operation.
- Lack of lubrication on the key internal components, as over a time of non-operation oil will settle at the bottom of the compressor and there will not be the usual lubricating film of oil on pistons and other components at time of start-up.
- Cooling and thickening of oil can cause filters to become blocked, and also leads to increased load on the system when it comes to starting up the cycle again.
- Vermin, dust and moisture will often find a home within many parts of your equipment where they do not belong, including electrical switchboards.
- The load on the equipment at start-up is higher as it has to bring the temperature all the way down from ambient to cool, so combining the increased workload with a large number of potential internal weaknesses, the start-up period is one of this most likely times you will suffer a failure of your equipment.
Keeping all of this in mind, it is more important than ever to ensure you are appropriately covered if you come across any of these issues when restarting your equipment. We have a number of options available to help prevent unnecessary out of pocket expenses upon start-up of the operations again
If you have any questions on this information or any matter, please do not hesitate to reach out to your account manager or the office on (02) 9587 3500 or email us at theteam@wsib.com.au.
