Could Missed Maintenance Shorten the Useful Life of Your Equipment?
From the Hydronix Preventive Maintenance Series
Once upon a time, there was a woman writing a blog.
She asked another person to read it.
“It’s too long.”
So she shortened it.
“It’s still too long.”
The woman checked the word count. The blog was approximately 350 words. An average adult could read it in less than two minutes.
Unfortunately, the reader was not operating under normal conditions. Alcohol had not made the blog longer. It had simply amplified an existing condition: impatience.
The blog’s actual length remained unchanged. Its “feels like” length was apparently War and Peace.
As the blog’s “feels like” length continued to grow, so did the reader’s effective age.
The blog was not aging them. The rapidly increasing danger that they were going to get seriously hurt if their “feels like” reading time kept interfering with the woman’s actual word count was threatening to shorten their life expectancy.
For legal purposes, this is a fable.
Mechanical equipment has an effective age too.
Two systems can be the same age on paper and still be in very different condition. One may have been cleaned, inspected, and corrected regularly. The other may have spent years operating dirty, restricted, out of adjustment, or with small problems quietly creating unnecessary wear.
When equipment has to work harder than it should to perform the same job, its actual age does not change. However, the added strain may cause wear to accumulate faster, increasing its effective age.
If its effective age gets too high, the equipment may suffer a premature death.
Preventive maintenance gives us an opportunity to clean the equipment, take measurements, and identify conditions that may be making it work harder than necessary. It cannot make the equipment younger or guarantee how long it will last. It may, however, help prevent it from aging faster than it should.
So, could missed maintenance shorten the useful life of your equipment?
Yes.
Not because missing one appointment automatically kills a boiler, furnace, or air conditioner, but because problems that are never found are allowed to continue.
Unlike one completely fictional blog reader, your equipment cannot complain every time its job feels harder than it should.
We have to inspect it and take measurements.
If your equipment has been aging without a physical, now is a good time to schedule one.
Click below to request service or maintenance.
or you can call or text us at (970) 930-1488 or email info@hydronixmechanical.com.
Comments