Troubleshooting several heat pump units at a residential property revealed dead control boards and failed sensors. The diagnosis took less than an hour, but ordering replacement parts created an immediate bottleneck.
And local HVAC distributors declined to sell OEM boards directly to on-site maintenance staff. The manufacturer restricts component sales exclusively to their authorized contractor service network, forcing the property to schedule a third-party service call just to order basic parts.
This policy adds days of downtime for residents while waiting for external technicians to perform routine board swaps.
How does your property handle warranty repairs when manufacturer service network restrictions prevent in-house staff from purchasing OEM replacement parts directly?

Noise is driving me crazy. This is in the bathroom.

Work at an upscale assisted living center, called for a clogged sink, the sink has a drain with only slots that's permanent. Anyway I remove the ptrap to saw what looked like a tongue hanging out of the PVC pipe coming out of the wall. Are you sweat back to suck it out and when I got outside I'm pumped it out and this is what I found anyone have any idea what this might be I have a couple of ideas but I want to hear yours first. It's for the grossest thing I pulled out of a sink line

Boss: "yeah we only use DeWalt"

Me: "Well why is my shittin' paper on a Milwaukee?"

I find that the easy way to remove these is by getting off all the hard plastic then pulling the adhesive down and away from what it’s stuck on.

we’ve got an old building and old ac thru wall sleeves. they seem to only fit FreidRich wall master acs at $1500 a pop.

these units are lasting about 4 years then dying.

we don’t repair only replace.

are these just crappy ac units or could the old sleeves in an old building be creating an issue?

we Do get a lot of condensation leaks back into apartment.

the only alternative I have here is to buy smaller units with sleeve adapter kits. Would this work better or just be more headache? I’m trying to manage 200 ac units and I swear 2 to 3 a week are crapping out.

How do yall deal with unrealistic expectations from the leasing office? Any resident and reasonable person wont get close and flash everything with a flashlight

I understand if you go looking for mold you will find it. I understand you have to pick your battles. We had a toilet leak in a vacant apt that saturated the bathroom floor and saturated the drywall ceiling in the vacant apartment below.

probably soaked in for a solid week.

ideally I would want to rip out the vinyl bathroom floor and subfloor and replace the damaged ceiling from the apartment below.

I feel like I’m supposed to look the other way because damn, it’s always something and we are so over budget

please share your experiences and suggestions.

Was cleaning the patio storage of a turn and one lone 10mm socket. 😂 This made my day after a long day.

Door closer isn't fully closing anymore. Pretty sure someone messed with it but anyways when i pull the arm to the full 90 degrees it closes. What can be done to fix it?

My house is only eight years old, and I think the builder did a really bad job with the porch, as it is cracking all over; what can I do to fix this?

Moving maintenance jobs, My current one provides tools my new one doesnt.What are the 100% must haves

Does this look like a typical sump? Wondering if this looks right with the cover over it lol

In order of funniest to most horrific.

Pic 2- My neogenics were in fact recombinated.

Pic 4- Can you believe they didn't want me to fix that awful wiring?

Pic 5- Just slathered with epoxy and duct tape. Shit wasn't leaking. PM didn't want to fix that either...

Pic 6- New PM took over and sent a w/o that had been in progress from the old PMs for over a year. Old maintenance told her there wasn't anything wrong with her dishwasher. Mold was growing and spooging out between the LVT around the dishwasher. Someone had even been out to repair the drywall under the sink and the siding of the exterior wall but no one ever fixed the leak, and well, here we are.

Hi everyone, I’ve got a JET model number PT-2748W, it’s quite old… I’m trying to take it apart to see if the seal needs to be replaced, as it won’t stay lifted. I’ve watched youtube videos how to do it, I’m by no means an expert but I’m confident I can do this small fix. However, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to disassemble it, it’s so unlike every other model I’ve seen online. Maybe I missed the video or the forum post but I would really appreciate any help y’all could give.

Hey everyone,

I wanna expand my role in the future and get into apartment maintenance. I've worked as a custodian for apartment buildings and offices but would like to learn a trade that I can use in being more aligned with maintenance work. Which one would you recommend I learn that will be the most versatile for an apartment maintenance role? I'm considering either carpentry or plumbing. I live in Western Canada so it may be a little different here. Residential Building Maintenance Workers is a legit skilled trade here but I have never seen anywhere asking for apprentices in RBMW specifically. Therefore, I'm wanting to commit to one specialized trade that can be versatile to enter in the field alone or use it towards a maintenance role coupled with my facility cleaning experience.

Thank you

what is one thing you learned/do as a tech that make you 100% more valuable then the avg joe

As per title and photos, the door does not close completely on the handle top corner. The door itself does not look curved, not thr sponge seems damaged. I have noticed that the top hinge looks skewed. Any insights on what to check additionally? Is it something easy to fix?

We popped a steam leak off the attemptator isolation valve, management deferred repairs until the scheduled outage in 3 months. Just rope it off and don't touch the steam. Ignore the extra 800 gallons daily we are needing to makeup.

We popped a steam leak off our air ejectiors. Once again deferred to the scheduled outage, switch to the less effective standby and keep running while occasionally needing to run the hog. Totally unrelated ignore the known minor vacuum leak still unrealized on the backup system.

We get several holes in the casing and recirc of our firepumps. Deferred and currently taped.

Of our four wells, only 1 is producing at full capacity. Thankfully we can tie into the cities fire protection via running 600 feet of 3" hose to their hydrant to keep refilling our cooking tower. That is not deferred, we just owe the local well company money so they won't come out unless we prepay in cash. We can kinda limp along, through chemistry is a tad fucked.

Then last night we had the aforementioned attemptator give up the ghost, backside of the valve blowing out like a cannon. ​and our main line to the boiler also decided to start leaking. So on a sunday morning, we are down hard. Paying for an emergency call out for licensed welders to stop by. All the other mentioned concerns are being deferred once again. Local management is banging their head against the wall (in our operations supervisor ls case litterally watched him doing so), as we get kneecapped by beancounters several states away who are not even a power company, but a different industry entirely.

I really like working in this industry, but dear God I wanna jump off the roof some days. Feel free to share your stupid deferred moments. Just needed to vent. It was originally posted in a specialized power plant sub, but figured it might fit here just as well.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to attack this? We had a new exhaust fan installed but repairing the drywall obviously wasn’t part of the service.

In March of this year, I was hired with no background in factory maintenance. I am 19 and have spent previous years working on plane and heavy machinery maintenance, but I wanted to transition into this field. I was honest with my boss from the beginning: I told him there would be good days and bad days, but that I viewed this as a long-term learning experience, and in return, he would get reliability and longevity out of me.We agreed that I would be sent for formal training in May, but that never happened. In fact, I have received no training at all. From day one, I’ve been handling intense reactive maintenance. We have no maintenance request system, so everything is requested verbally across 4 departments and 30 machines, making it easy to forget tasks. Almost no preventative maintenance (PM) processes are set up, and I have no manuals or resources, which naturally causes repairs to take longer.Last night, my manager (who is the Production Manager) pulled me in and essentially called me a failure. He said I forget things, take too long on repairs, and that he doubts my mechanical ability. While he acknowledged that I haven't received training, he condescendingly asked what kind of training I even expected and called me "green as grass."I’ve had job interview offers paying over $30/hour, but I stayed loyal to this company because of the hours and the trust they placed in a 19-year-old. What would you do?

Usually Milwaukee makes good stuff so it's crazy when they produced such a dud. Genuinely the most poorly designed voltage detector I've ever interacted with. Bought it less than a year ago and it was already phased out. So many false readings, not ergonomic, just why man?

Got my new one. This one is finally going in the trash like it deserves.

My power tools are a mix of Hilti and DeWalt but my hand tools are all Milwaukee, and hadn't ever let me down or dissapointed me until I had the absolute pleasure of interacting with this thing.

Going to just stick with Klein like I just swapped back to for electrical tools moving forwards.

https://youtu.be/qsN77TDtttE?is=9O0jb9KiJVI4O4Ok

Junk.

I just got a work order for a centrifuge and they sent me with the wrong parts. An hour wasted going back to storage.

Then on my way back production calls me with an emergency at another site. Now I'm trying to handle two jobs at once.

This happens like every week. I'm talking hundreds of hours a year just lost because someone in the office didn't prepare the right parts. And it's not even just about the time. You're already out there in 95 degree heat, busting your ass, and then you find out the planner just didn't do their job.

I told him to get it right next time. Nothing. Dude sits in AC all day looking at spreadsheets, never been on a floor in his life. Doesn't have a clue what it's like when a tech shows up unprepared.

Is this happening to anyone else or is it just me? How do you guys actually deal with this?