The Pre-Season Chiller Checklist Our Techs Actually Use

There's a specific pattern to when we get emergency calls: right before harvest, right before summer peak, right before the holiday production ramp. Not because equipment fails on a schedule, but because that's when systems get pushed hardest — and small issues that were tolerable at normal load suddenly aren't.

"The chillers that fail during peak season almost never fail because of something new," said John McCoy, Tech Support Manager. "They fail because of something that was already marginal, and peak load just pushed it past the point where it could keep compensating."

Five checks catch the overwhelming majority of pre-season issues, and none of them require specialized tools:

Clean condenser coils. Fouled coils raise head pressure and force the compressor to work harder for the same output. This is the single most common — and most preventable — efficiency loss we see.

Verify refrigerant levels. Low charge doesn't always throw an obvious alarm. It shows up as reduced capacity right when you need full capacity the most.

Inspect pumps and motors. Listen for anything that's changed — new noise, new vibration, longer start-up time. These are early symptoms, not background noise.

Test alarms and controls. An alarm that doesn't fire is worse than no alarm at all, because it creates false confidence. Test them before the season that actually needs them to work.

Replace worn components. If something was flagged as "watch it" during the last service visit, peak season is not the time to keep watching it.

None of these are complicated. What matters is doing them before the season ramps, not during it, because once peak production starts, there's no good window to take a system offline for preventive work.

Looking for more chiller maintenance guidance, troubleshooting information, and practical tips?

Explore More Resources & Tips →