Commercial HVAC & Building Maintenance in Nanaimo & Vancouver Island
P3 Mechanical & Electrical runs scheduled HVAC and building maintenance programs for offices, retail, strata, and light industrial buildings across Nanaimo and central Vancouver Island. A program is priced per site from the equipment list rather than per square foot, and the visit schedule is set the same way, with kitchen exhaust and rooftop equipment on a shorter cycle than an office split system. Both come from a walkthrough and arrive in writing, so there is a number and a schedule a council or an owner can approve as they stand.
A program, not a series of call-outs
Maintaining a building is a different exercise from maintaining a house. One site can carry several rooftop units, a make-up air unit, exhaust fans, a split system holding up a server room, and controls tying some of them together — and the person paying for it is usually a property manager or a strata council who needs a record as much as a repair. So the work starts with an inventory: make, model, age, location, access, and what stops working in the building when each item stops.
From there it runs on a schedule instead of on phone calls. Filters, belts, and bearings; coils cleaned and condensate drains cleared before the season loads them; refrigerant and electrical readings recorded so this visit can be compared against the last one; make-up air balanced against what the hoods actually pull; life-safety items logged ahead of the annual fire inspection rather than discovered during it. Each visit ends in a written report split into what was done, what is being watched, and what needs quoting — the form a council or an owner can act on, and the form that feeds a depreciation report. The single-system version of the same discipline, for a house or a small suite, is our HVAC maintenance plan.
What's included
- An equipment inventory per site: make, model, age, location, and how each unit is reached
- Filters, belts, and bearings checked and changed on every unit on the schedule
- Coils cleaned and condensate drains cleared before the season puts a load on them
- Refrigerant and electrical readings recorded and compared against the previous visit
- Make-up air and exhaust checked against each other in buildings with kitchens or shops
- Life-safety items logged ahead of the annual fire inspection instead of found during it
- A written report per visit: done, watching, and needs quoting
Pricing & what's covered
Free estimate
We price the job after an in-home visit, once someone has seen what's there.
- One-year warranty on our labour. Equipment and parts are covered separately, under the supplier's or manufacturer's own warranty.
- Licensed in BC: Refrigeration licence LBP0210874.
How it works
Walkthrough — we inventory the roof and the mechanical rooms, and agree what is in scope and what is not.
Scope and price — a written program per site, in a form a strata council or an owner can approve as it stands.
Scheduled visits — dates set ahead, so access to occupied suites and tenant spaces is arranged rather than negotiated at the door.
Reporting — readings, photographs of anything failing, and a separate list of what to quote, kept building by building.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from your HVAC maintenance plan?
Scale and paperwork. The HVAC maintenance plan covers one system — a furnace, a heat pump, an air conditioner — on a seasonal visit. A building program covers every piece of equipment on a site as a single inventory, on one schedule, with a written report per visit that a property manager or a strata council can file and act on.
Do you take on strata buildings?
Yes. Strata work needs the split between common property and the individual unit made visible, because the bylaws and the Strata Property Act decide who pays for what, not the contractor. We itemize by location and system so a council can see which side of that line each item falls on.
Can one contractor cover the HVAC, the plumbing, and the fire protection?
On this site, yes — a rooftop replacement that also needs a relocated sprinkler head and a condensate line re-run stays one scope and one invoice. Splitting mechanical work across separate contractors is usually where scheduling and accountability come apart, because each one arrives assuming the next has the piece in between.
What happens if something breaks between scheduled visits?
Call it in and it is handled as a repair rather than as part of the program. What the program changes is the starting point: we already know the equipment, its history, and how to get to it, so the diagnosis does not begin from nothing on the day something fails.
How much does a commercial maintenance program cost?
We publish no rates, and there is no per-square-foot figure that survives contact with a real building. The price is built from the equipment list after a walkthrough — how many units, how old they are, how hard they are to reach, and how often each one needs looking at — so a single rooftop unit over a shop and a strata with eight of them plus a kitchen are not the same program at a discount. You get the number in writing before anything is scheduled.
How often would you actually be on site?
Programs are annual, semi-annual, or a schedule built around your equipment, and which of those a site gets is agreed at the walkthrough rather than assumed. Kitchen exhaust, make-up air, and rooftop equipment come round faster than an office split system, and filters set the floor for the rest. Dates are set ahead so access to occupied suites is arranged rather than negotiated at the door, and anything fitted during a visit carries a one-year warranty on our labour with the part covered by its own manufacturer.
Ready to get it fixed?
Call now, or send us the details online and we'll follow up.