Every week, we have a meeting to discuss the type of requests we are receiving and in the last week, we have received a number of requests relating to chiller failures. For those of you with CT, MR or PET/CT scanners or linear accelerators or any device that requires chilled water to operate, now might be the time to do a PM on your equipment.

It is a recurring theme and I have seen it happen every year about this time. As the weather gets hot, the chiller, which is something that everybody takes for granted, shuts down and people are temporarily out of business.

It is amazing to me how people with machines that cost more than $1 million experience a shutdown because the $30,000 chiller is not working correctly.

There is more activity on our Service Forum, more requests for replacement chillers, more requests for replacement coldhead compressors and coldheads.

Let's just look at an MRI; when the chiller shuts down, the tech restarts it. The compressor shuts down again and again and again and finally the compressor gets hot and pumps oil into the helium lines and coldhead and now the customer is stuck replacing the compressor, helium lines and the coldhead, all because the proper maintenance was not done on the chiller.

Let this be a wakeup call. Get your HVAC people out there to do a PM on your chillers and air conditioners. You will be glad you did.

As the great football coach and commentator Lou Holtz once said, "the man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it."

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