How to Survive When the Air Conditioning Breaks

It seems like the hottest day of the year, and you and your team are busy working away in the office. The phones are ringing off the hook, deadlines are looming, to make matters worse, the air conditioning has stopped working completely. The staff members are starting to get irritable and the work pace is slowing down.

The temperature is slowly rising in the office and people are starting to get hot under the collar. A hot work environment increases stress levels and can lead to errors and mistakes, and lost sales. You need the air conditioning back up and running as quickly as possible before you loose your cool. Here are some quick and simple tips to help you survive:

1. Check you have the correct settings on the thermostat and that your air conditioning is turned on. Incorrect thermostat settings such as selecting heating instead of cooling are the most common reason why office air conditioning stops working.

2. Ensure the power is turned on to your air conditioning. Power spikes can trip the circuit breakers and cause the system to stop working. If the circuit breaker keeps tripping however, this is a good indicator of an electrical fault, and you should leave it turned off.

3. Where possible, open some windows to create some air flow, and to allow fresh air into the building. With the temperature rising, a little bit of fresh air will make it just that little bit more bearable and will help you and your staff to survive.

4. Go and make everybody an ice cold refreshing drink. It will be a few hours before the air conditioning is back online, and your staff will be real appreciative. Not only will it put a smile on their face, it will also make them more productive.

5. Call in a reputable service company for repair work. Most faults are easily repaired in a matter of hours by a professional service engineer.

6. Take steps to prevent the same thing happening again in the future. Many faults are completely avoidable and are caused by a simple lack of maintenance. Talk with your service company about setting up a comprehensive maintenance and service programme for your air conditioning and ventilation systems. As a general rule of thumb, commercial systems should be maintained on at least a three monthly basis. Not only does maintenance help prevent unnecessary breakdowns, it also helps extends the life of the equipment.