Annual and Quarterly PM Inspections for CARB Appliances
- Anastasia Troichuk (Unlicensed)
Overview
Companies with locations in the state of California are required to carry out leak inspections for refrigerated and HVAC appliances that fall under the purview of the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
Such appliances need to be inspected annually or quarterly even if there have not been any leak events associated with them.
Contact your ServiceChannel representative to enable this add-on feature.
Annual vs. Quarterly CARB Inspections
The frequency of CARB inspections depends on the total system charge of appliances. On the Refrigerant Tracking Admin page, you can specify for which assets the PM module should generate annual leak inspections and for which assets there should be quarterly leak inspections.
- Yearly inspections are required for assets where the total charge is equal to or more than the quantity you entered in the Yearly field, for example, 50 lbs.
- Quarterly inspections are required for appliances where the total charge is equal to or more than the quantity specified in the Quarterly field, for example, 500 lbs.
You should have the Refrigerant Tracking Admin page enabled in order to set up leak inspections for CARB assets. If you don’t have the page activated yet, contact your Customer Success Manager.
Setting Up Inspections for CARB Assets
- Click the hamburger menu in the upper-left corner, and select Admin > Refrigerant Tracking.
- Click the pencil icon ✐ in the upper-right corner to edit the settings.
Select the Enable CARB Inspections checkbox, and pick the date in the Calendar Start Date field.
The Calendar Start Date becomes the call date of the PM work orders that will be automatically generated for CARB inspections.
- Make sure you have the Minimum Threshold for Annual and Quarterly Leak Inspections field filled out:
- Yearly. Enter the minimum system charge required to create an annual PM leak inspection work order. For appliances where the total charge is equal to or more than the Yearly threshold, the system will generate annual CARB inspections in Planned Maintenance.
- Quarterly. Enter the minimum system charge required to create quarterly leak inspections. For appliances where the total charge is equal to or more than the Quarterly threshold, the system will generate quarterly CARB inspections in Planned Maintenance.
- Make sure you also have the Run CARB Report preference turned on. Having this setting configured properly will allow you to automatically include CARB inspections in your CARB XML report.
- Click Save to apply the changes.
Your next step is to ensure that all the assets that fall under the purview of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) are marked with the corresponding flag in Asset Manager. Learn more about Identifying Assets for CARB Reporting.
Managing CARB Inspections in the Planned Maintenance Module
You do not need to create inspection services for CARB assets manually in the Planned Maintenance module — these PM services with the corresponding frequencies are created automatically once you mark an asset with the Is Tracked by CARB flag upon:
To enable CARB leak inspections for existing appliances that are already marked with the Is Tracked by CARB flag, resave the asset information from the asset details page.
After you’ve marked an asset with the Is Tracked by CARB flag, a new CARB leak inspection PM service gets added to the list of PM services. The asset gets linked to that PM service.
If the CARB leak inspection PM service already exists for the corresponding asset trade, a new frequency will be added under the existing PM service.
As opposed to refrigerated appliances that are not tracked by CARB and where leak inspections are created in the event of a leak rate meeting or exceeding the threshold, there will be no leak inspections created and tied to that particular leak event when a refrigerant leak is detected on a CARB unit and the leak rate meets or exceeds the threshold.
