The ice machine is not making ice, or the ice is slimy
An ice machine that stops producing is a refrigeration unit with a water supply, and either half can be the fault.
Insights
Notes from the field
Practical guidance for people responsible for commercial property in South Florida. What actually fails, why, and what it costs to leave it.
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Something is broken right now
Symptom first, with what to check and what to stop doing before anybody attends. 46 articles Browse them by where in the building.
We have lost a master or building key: what now
A missing master key is a risk that grows with the number of doors it opens, so the first job is to find out exactly which doors those are.
Paint is peeling or bubbling on a commercial wall
Paint that bubbles or flakes has almost always been pushed off by something, and repainting over the top only hides it for a season.
A glass storefront door drags or will not lock
A glass door that drags or will not meet its lock has usually dropped on its pivots or fittings, and the glass itself is often fine.
An office or upper-floor window is cracked or broken
Above the ground floor the first job is keeping people out from under the window, and the second is covering the opening before the weather arrives.
A tempered glass door has shattered
A shattered tempered door leaf has done what it was built to do, and what remains is a door that cannot close, a floor covered in small pieces and a building that is open.
Show all 46 in this group
A window is leaking around the glass when it rains
Water at the edge of a window in the rain usually comes through the sealant, the gasket or the glazing bead, but it can also be arriving from somewhere above and only showing up at the glass.
There is a hole in a commercial wall: repairing it fast
A hole in a wall looks like a ten-minute job until the cutting starts and something is behind it.
A light is out and the bulb is not the problem
When a new lamp does not bring a light back, the fault is in one of four places, and the first two cost nothing to rule out.
The walk-in door will not seal and frost is building
When a walk-in door does not seal, the box takes in warm humid air every minute, and the frost and the running compressor follow from that.
The air conditioning is leaking water inside
An air conditioner dripping indoors is usually removing humidity correctly and failing to get rid of it.
A sliding door is hard to slide or off its track
A sliding door that has started to drag is running on rollers that have already failed, and every use from here is grinding the track.
There is a sewage smell in the building
Most sewage smells in commercial buildings come from a drain nobody uses, and the fix is a jug of water.
Floor tile is lifting, cracked or loose
A loose floor tile is a trip claim waiting to be filed, and the tile is rarely the thing that failed.
A crack has appeared in a wall
Whether a crack is still moving matters more than how wide it is, and finding out takes a pencil and a date.
Pests are getting in: finding the entry points
Treatment kills what is inside. The building decides how much comes in next week.
A musty smell with no visible water
A musty smell means something has been damp long enough for growth to start, and the water is rarely where the smell is strongest.
One area is too hot or too cold
One room at the wrong temperature while everywhere else is comfortable is usually an airflow problem rather than a capacity one.
What to have ready when you call for emergency service
The information that decides how fast somebody reaches you is rarely the description of the fault.
Glass has cracked but not fallen: how long can it wait?
A cracked pane that is still standing is either stable for weeks or hours from letting go, and the glass type decides which.
The alarm keeps going off at night
Repeated night activations are usually a building problem being reported by an alarm that is working correctly.
Graffiti and storefront damage: back to trading condition
Graffiti gets harder to remove every day it stays up, and a frontage that keeps it for two weeks tends to attract more.
Lights are flickering in part of the building
How much of the building flickers, and when, is the difference between a lamp at the end of its life and a connection that is heating up.
An outlet or a circuit has stopped working
A dead outlet has a reset device behind it more often than it has a fault, and the device is rarely in the room you are standing in.
There is a burning smell and nothing visible
A smell of hot plastic with no visible source is the one building complaint that should never be filed for the morning.
Parking lot or sign lighting is out
Exterior lighting fails one fixture at a time, and nobody reports it until the dark patch is large enough to feel unsafe.
A toilet is running, or the water bill has jumped
A commercial water bill that has jumped with no change in occupancy is usually a leak that has been running quietly for weeks.
There is no hot water
Whether the hot water is gone everywhere or only at one fixture narrows this to a handful of causes in about two minutes.
The first 48 hours after a storm
The order the first two days go in decides how much of the damage is covered and how much is argued about later.
There was a break-in overnight: securing the property and the record
Two things are running from the moment you arrive, an open building and an evidence record, and they pull in opposite directions.
Storefront glass is broken: the first hour
A broken storefront is two problems at once, an open building and a hazard on a public footway, and they are dealt with in that order.
Water is coming through the ceiling: what to do first
Water arriving through a ceiling has already been somewhere else for a while, and where it entered is rarely where it is coming out.
The walk-in is not holding temperature tonight
A walk-in that is climbing has a few hours of usable stock in it, and the first checks are worth doing before anybody is called.
A commercial drain or toilet is backing up
Whether one fixture is blocked or the whole line is backing up is the first thing to establish, and it changes everything that follows.
Part of the building has lost power
Whether the supply is out or the building is faulty is answerable from the sidewalk, and it decides who you should be calling.
A roller shutter or gate is stuck
Stuck open and stuck closed are different emergencies, and the first thing to do in both is stop pressing the button.
A ceiling tile is stained or sagging: what it is telling you
Replacing a stained ceiling tile takes two minutes and hides the only evidence of where the water came from.
Commercial door will not lock: what to do tonight
A door that will not lock is an open building, whatever the alarm says. Here is what to check before you call, and what it almost always turns out to be.
Locked out of a commercial property: what happens when you call
A commercial lockout is a different job from a domestic one, mostly because of who is allowed to authorize it.
A commercial door that will not close or latch
A door that swings most of the way shut and then stops is not almost closed. It is open, and on a rated assembly it has lost its rating.
Keypad or card reader has stopped working
An access reader that has stopped responding is a door nobody can use, and how you handle the next hour depends on which way the lock fails.
A key has snapped in a commercial lock
A key that has snapped off in the cylinder is usually recoverable. The next ten minutes decide whether it stays that way.
Automatic or powered door not working
A powered door that has stopped is two problems at once: an opening that does not work, and an accessible entrance that may no longer be one.
An exit door or panic bar that will not release
An exit device that needs a second push, a twist or a shove has already failed the only test that matters.
Commercial AC not cooling: what to check before you call
A fair share of no-cooling calls turn out to be something the site could have settled in five minutes. The rest go considerably faster when the right information is ready before the phone rings.
What happens in a storefront emergency board-up
Broken storefront glass is two jobs on two different clocks. One of them has to happen today and the other should not be rushed.
Inspections, citations and compliance
For the reader holding a report with a correction date on it, and for the one getting ready. 17 articles
Backflow preventer test: what the annual notice means
A backflow notice asks you to prove that a device on your water line still works. The test is routine, and a failure is usually a repair rather than an emergency.
A vendor's insurance certificate has expired
A lapsed certificate does not stop a vendor working. It stops you being able to show they were covered, and the gap usually surfaces on the day something goes wrong.
Who is the technician with keys to your building?
A vendor's paperwork describes the company. Your tenants and your insurer care about the person who walks through the door, and the two are not the same document.
The fire inspector wrote us up: closing the findings out
A fire inspection report is a list with a date attached, and the order you work through it matters nearly as much as the work.
A code violation on a commercial property: closing it out
A notice of violation is a maintenance job with an administrative process around it, and the process is the half people underestimate.
An ADA complaint about a door: what actually has to change
Measure the door before you assume anything about it, because the reading decides whether this is an adjustment or a new opening.
Show all 17 in this group
A health inspector citation: the maintenance items behind it
A good share of a kitchen inspection report is building fabric rather than procedure, and those items are fixed rather than trained.
Emergency lighting and exit signs failed the test
Emergency lighting fails quietly, because nothing about a unit that is not working looks different from one that is.
An insurance loss control survey found deficiencies
A loss control report reads like advice and behaves like a deadline, and the difference is in which items are written as conditions.
Handyman or licensed contractor: which does this job need?
The question is which trade the work falls in, and the size of the job has nothing to do with the answer.
Fire door inspection: the annual requirement and the paperwork
A fire door only works if it closes and latches by itself, every time. Almost everything that gets written up is a door that no longer does.
What legally needs a licensed electrician in Florida
The most expensive misunderstanding in commercial maintenance is the belief that small electrical jobs are exempt. There is no size threshold. There never was.
Panic hardware and exit devices: what an inspector checks
An inspector does not look at an exit device. They walk up to it, push it the way somebody leaving in a hurry would, and watch what happens.
ADA opening force: the limit, and how doors fail it
A door that takes real effort to open is an accessibility problem before it is a maintenance one, and the usual cause is somebody trying to fix a different fault.
Impact-rated glazing and the NOA: what needs a permit
Repairing an existing opening and replacing a storefront look similar from the sidewalk. One is maintenance and the other is permitted construction, and the boundary matters.
Walk-in temperature logs: what to record, and what it tells you
Most kitchens keep a temperature log because somebody will ask to see it. Kept properly, it is also the earliest warning you will get that a compressor is in trouble.
Grease traps in a Miami commercial kitchen: what fails and why
A grease trap is the cheapest piece of equipment in a commercial kitchen and the one most likely to close it for a day.
Taking on, holding and handing back a property
The situations that produce a list: a new building, a vacant unit, a tenant leaving, a season. 25 articles
Tenant maintenance requests: urgent, or can it wait?
Every request sounds urgent to the person making it. A fixed rule, based on risk to people, security, water and the building, lets you decide the same way every time.
Annual door closer and hinge service for a building
Closers wear out slowly and fail on the worst day. A yearly pass over every door finds the weak ones while they are still a small job.
Arranging storefront board-up before hurricane season
Arrange board-up while the weather is quiet. Once a storm is named, every glass-fronted building in the county is looking for the same vendor.
The yearly key and access code audit
Once a year, compare what your records say about keys and codes with what is actually out there. The two rarely match the first time.
Storefront checks before the holiday season
Heavier foot traffic and longer trading hours find every weak point at the entrance. One planned pass now finds those faults before the busiest weeks, when a repair is hardest to fit in.
Door and glass inspection once hurricane season is over
A building that came through the season without an obvious loss has still been soaked and pushed hard by wind, and the damage that results shows up months later as a leak.
Show all 25 in this group
A yearly check of storefront glass and glass doors
Glass gets attention when it cracks. A walk round once a year finds most of what would have cracked it.
Handing back a leased unit: making good before surrender
Making good means returning the unit in the condition the lease describes, fair wear aside, and the landlord will check it against a list you have not seen.
Servicing roller shutters and gates before they stick
Most shutters and gates are looked at once, on the day they fail. A scheduled service finds the faults while they are still small, before they close the opening on a working day.
Reopening a space that has been closed for months
A building that has been shut is not the building you left, and most of what changed is invisible until something is switched on.
A vacant unit: what to check while it sits empty
An empty unit deteriorates faster than an occupied one, and almost all of it is preventable by turning up.
Taking over a restaurant space: what to check before signing
The cheapest changes to a restaurant space are the ones agreed before signing, and the expensive ones are all in the same three places.
Hurricane shutters: testing them before you need them
Shutters get tested when a storm is named, which is the one moment there is no time to fix what the test finds.
A tenant is moving out this week: what to secure before they go
The week before a tenant leaves is the only time you can establish what the space was handed back in, and it does not come round again.
First week in a new building: what to check before you inherit it
Everything wrong with a building you have just taken on becomes yours the moment something proves it, so it is worth finding out first.
The commercial hurricane preparation checklist
Most storm damage on commercial property starts with something that was already loose, already blocked or already failing before the season began.
Maintenance a Miami restaurant needs, month by month
A restaurant that only fixes what breaks pays the emergency rate every time. The alternative is a calendar, and in Miami the calendar is shaped by the weather.
Closing checklist for a retail storefront: locks, glass and lighting
Most overnight incidents at a retail unit trace back to something that was already wrong at closing time and nobody was looking for.
Condo common elements: association or unit owner
Almost every repair argument in a condo building is presented as a disagreement about the documents. Most of them are a disagreement about what actually failed.
Key control after an employee termination
A departure is the moment a key register either earns its cost or reveals that nobody has kept one.
The quarterly walk: what to check on a commercial property
Most emergency call-outs were visible for weeks. The walk that would have caught them takes about ninety minutes and almost nobody does it.
Tenant turnover punch lists: what to fix between tenants
The gap between one tenant leaving and the next arriving is the only window you get. Everything not fixed in it gets fixed later, at a worse price, around somebody trading.
Building a preventive maintenance schedule that survives contact with reality
Almost every property has a maintenance schedule somewhere. The useful question is whether anyone has looked at it since the year it was written.
Who pays: splitting repair responsibility in a multi-tenant building
Most landlord and tenant repair disputes are not really disagreements about the lease. They are disagreements about what actually failed.
The roof checks worth doing before hurricane season
Almost everything that goes wrong on a commercial roof during a storm was visible on the roof in May.
Running a particular kind of property
What goes wrong in one sector rather than another, and what the operator can do about it. 10 articles
Gyms: humidity, heavy doors and unattended hours
The changing rooms age the building faster than the gym floor does.
Schools and childcare: working around term time and access
The holidays are the maintenance window, and everything that needs one has to be booked against it.
Bank branches: closed-hours work and a key register that holds up
Almost nothing in a branch should be happening at a public counter, which decides the whole schedule.
Self-storage: hundreds of latches and one gate
Handling hundreds of latches one complaint at a time costs far more in attendances than it does in work.
Salons and spas: humidity, chemicals and finishes that show everything
The room is part of what the client is paying for, which makes a damaged finish a trading problem.
Hotel back of house: maintenance around a building that never closes
Guest rooms get the attention and the service corridor does the work.
Show all 10 in this group
Office churn: moving teams without wrecking the finishes
Nothing in an office is damaged by one move. It is damaged by the fourth.
Medical and dental suites: maintenance around patients
A damaged surface in a clinical room is a finding rather than a decorating job.
Grocery and convenience: what actually keeps the doors open
A cabinet door that no longer seals costs more over a year than the repair ever would.
Dealership showrooms: glass, lighting and the service bay
The showroom is judged on presentation and the workshop behind it is judged on whether the doors still work.
Choosing and managing a vendor
What to ask, what an invoice should say, and what to get back when a relationship ends. 15 articles
Choosing a commercial locksmith in Miami
Pick a commercial locksmith before you need one. Whoever you call from a search result at night will hold your keys, your key codes and a way into the building.
What to ask before a vendor rekeys your building
A rekey changes which keys open your doors. It also decides who can cut more of them afterward, and that part is settled before the work starts.
Giving a vendor access: keys, codes and sign-in rules
A vendor with standing access holds a copy of your building, so the rules go in before the first key or code changes hands.
Two quotes for the same job, and they do not match
When two quotes for one repair disagree, the difference is almost always in what each vendor decided to include, and the work is finding that out.
Annual agreement or call by call
Plenty of properties are better off calling when something breaks, and a vendor who tells you otherwise is selling.
Our maintenance vendor has stopped showing up
Before deciding a vendor has stopped caring, find out whether the work orders are actually reaching a person.
Show all 15 in this group
Changing maintenance vendors: what to get back
The expensive part of changing vendors is not the work, it is everything the outgoing one knows about your building.
Do I need a locksmith or a door company?
Most commercial door faults get booked as lock problems, and a good share of them turn out to be the door.
Vendor onboarding: the COI, W-9 and license packet, item by item
Vendor onboarding is treated as paperwork. Every document in the packet exists because somebody once got hurt or unpaid without it.
How after-hours and emergency rates are structured
Emergency rates look arbitrary until you see what they are made of. Agreeing the structure in advance is what stops the first invoice being an argument.
Writing a punch list a vendor can actually price
A punch list that cannot be priced from the page turns into a survey visit, then a quote, then a work visit. Three attendances for a list that should have taken one.
What a COI is, and why your building keeps asking for one
The certificate of insurance is the piece of paper that decides whether your contractor gets through the loading dock. It is worth understanding before the morning of the job.
What a proper work-order closeout should contain
Most maintenance disputes are not disagreements about facts. They are disagreements that exist only because nobody wrote the facts down.
How to read a commercial maintenance invoice
Most disputes over maintenance invoices are not about dishonesty. They are about an invoice that never explained what the money bought.
Choosing a facility maintenance vendor: questions worth asking
The vendor comparison that matters is not the hourly rate. It is what happens on the third call, when the first two did not fix it.
How the trades actually work
The background pieces, for when you want to understand the thing rather than fix it tonight. 34 articles
Lock functions: which one each commercial door needs
Two locksets of the same grade can behave in opposite ways. The function decides which side locks and what the inside lever does.
A restroom stall door will not latch or lock
A stall door that swings open, will not lock or sags into the next stall draws complaints faster than almost anything else in a public restroom. Most of the time the panel is fine and the hardware has worn out.
Parking lot striping and ADA stall markings: when to redo
Restriping a lot to the layout it already has is painting work. Changing the layout is a compliance question, and the two are easy to confuse once a complaint arrives.
Mounting to a commercial wall: what actually holds
Almost everything that falls off a commercial wall was fixed to drywall and nothing else.
Why a drywall patch shows, and how to stop it
Most visible patches are not badly filled. They are finished to a lower standard than the wall around them.
Replacing ceiling tile without wrecking the rest of the grid
A replacement tile that is the right size and the wrong edge detail will not sit flat, and everybody will see it.
Show all 34 in this group
Trim and door frames: repairing rather than replacing
A frame takes the impact the door is blamed for, and it is the half nobody looks at.
Painting a space that is still trading
The painting is the easy part. Working around a business that cannot stop is the job.
Matching paint over a repair so it does not flash
The color can be exactly right and the patch still obvious, because the wall is not reflecting light the same way.
What actually happens on a commercial rekey
A rekey changes what the lock answers to. The lock itself usually stays on the door.
Lock grades: what Grade 1, 2 and 3 actually mean
A lock that looks identical to the one next to it can be rated for thirty times the use.
Adjusting a door closer: the valves and what each one does
Three small valves control almost everything a closer does, and turning the wrong one is how a door stops latching.
Thresholds, sweeps and weatherstripping: the parts that wear first
Kneel at a back door and look for daylight. Whatever you can see through, something else can get through.
What re-glazing an existing opening actually involves
Re-glazing puts new glass into the frame that is already there, and that distinction decides both the price and the paperwork.
A sealed glass unit has fogged: why, and what fixes it
Condensation on the inside face wipes off. Condensation between the panes does not, and that difference is the whole diagnosis.
Repair or replace a commercial door
The frame decides this more often than the door does, and it is the half nobody looks at.
Commercial signage: what fails and who fixes it
A sign is the one part of a building that is looked at by everybody and maintained by nobody.
Warehouse dock doors, gate access and the loading yard
A distribution building fails at its openings. Everything else can wait a day. A dock that will not open cannot.
Relamping against retrofit: what a technician can and cannot touch
Lighting is the one trade where the licensing line runs through the middle of a single job, and both halves can happen on the same fixture in one visit.
Card readers, keypads or keys: choosing access control
The question is rarely which technology is best. It is which one you can still administer in two years, when the person who set it up has left.
Fail-safe or fail-secure: what your electric strike does in a power cut
Every electrically controlled door has a defined behavior when the power goes. Most people managing those doors have never been told which behavior theirs has.
Caulking and joint sealing: the maintenance nobody schedules
Sealant is the cheapest component in a building envelope and the first one to fail. Almost nobody has it on a schedule, and almost every water problem we trace comes back to one.
Drywall repair after a leak, done so it does not come back
Almost every water-damaged wall we are called back to was patched while it was still wet. The repair was fine. The timing was the problem.
Pressure washing: what it fixes, and what it damages
Pressure washing is the cheapest visible improvement available on a commercial property, and the easiest way to cause damage that costs many times what the clean did.
Why commercial doors drop, and what alignment actually involves
A door that scrapes the frame, sticks at the top corner or has stopped latching is rarely a broken door. It has moved, and something moved it.
Tempered, laminated or insulated: what belongs in which opening
The three terms get used as though they are interchangeable. They describe different things, and putting the wrong one in an opening is expensive to discover.
Rekey or replace: what to do with commercial locks after a tenant leaves
A tenant hands the keys back and you have a decision to make the same week. The two options differ by an order of magnitude in cost, and picking the wrong one either wastes money or leaves the unit open to whoever kept a copy.
What a failing door closer is telling you
Commercial entrance doors rarely fail all at once. The closer goes first, it goes slowly, and every stage of it looks like something a tenant can live with until the door stops latching.
Setting up a master key system without losing control of it
Master key systems are easy to design and easy to ruin. The design takes an afternoon. Keeping it intact takes a register and the discipline to use it.
How often a South Florida commercial exterior needs repainting
Coating manufacturers quote service life for a temperate climate. Miami gives a facade ultraviolet all year, driving rain for half of it, and salt on any property within a few miles of the water.
Getting commercial HVAC through a Miami hurricane season
Storm damage to rooftop HVAC is rarely dramatic. It is water where water should not be, debris in a condenser, and a unit that runs for three more weeks before it stops.
Seven signs a walk-in cooler is about to fail
Refrigeration almost never dies without warning. It declines over weeks, and every one of those weeks is a chance to fix something cheap instead of something expensive.
Working out LED retrofit payback on Florida commercial property
Every LED quote arrives with a payback figure on it. The number is only worth anything if it was calculated from your run hours and your electricity rate rather than from a brochure.
Why your restaurant kitchen is too hot, and what make-up air has to do with it
A kitchen exhaust hood removes thousands of cubic feet of air a minute. If nothing is deliberately putting that air back, the building will find its own way, and you will not like it.
One company, whoever does the work
Our technicians handle the trades that need no state license, and licensed contractors handle the ones that do. Either way we scope it, book the visit and file the record. Tell us the property and the problem and we will come back with a window. Call out of hours and someone who works here answers.