I'd rather spend 10 minutes checking a McQuay compressor than 10 seconds approving a repair I didn't understand. That sentence has cost me some friendships in the maintenance world, but it's saved me enough money to pay for the patience.
I'm a procurement manager at a mid-size commercial building company. For six years I've managed an HVAC budget of about $180,000 in cumulative spending across two properties. I'm not a service tech. I'm the person who reads the invoice after the tech leaves. And I've learned one thing: the most expensive HVAC repair is the one you authorize before you verify what's broken.
Why I check a McQuay compressor before ordering parts
McQuay chillers and heat pumps aren't the only equipment in my buildings, but they're the ones that attract the biggest repair bills. A McQuay compressor failure is a capital-event kind of problem. A compressor can cost $10,000 to $30,000 depending on the model and whether you are buying a straight replacement or a retrofit. That's not a number I want to justify to my CFO on a Tuesday morning.
Here's what happened in 2023. One of our chillers threw a low oil pressure alarm. The service company told me the compressor was "worn" and recommended replacing it. They quoted $21,500 for a new McQuay compressor, plus installation, plus a crane and rigging, plus "emergency freight" because the building was getting warm. The total landed near $28,000.
I asked a simple question: Can you prove the oil pressure is actually low at the pump, or is that the sensor's opinion?
The tech got annoyed. Then he checked. It was a faulty oil pressure sensor. The actual oil pressure was fine. The replacement part cost $380. The labor cost $220. The chiller ran for another year without a compressor failure.
I'm not saying every low oil pressure alarm is a sensor problem. But in my experience, a sensor is the first thing to fail, and the oil pressure sensor is the one that gets ignored because it looks like a minor part. It isn't minor. It's the difference between a $600 repair and a $20,000 one.
A pool heater taught me to check the simple things first
We also manage a community center with a pool. The pool heater was a small commercial heat pump, not a McQuay, but the same logic applies. It started short-cycling and throwing a refrigerant pressure fault. The pool is open year-round, so this became an urgent problem. A service tech said the heat pump's condenser coil was "severely fouled" and recommended replacing the coil. Estimated cost: $8,400.
I asked whether we'd cleaned the water-side strainer recently. (Should mention: the maintenance log said we had, but nobody had actually signed off on it.) The tech said, "No, but the strainer wouldn't cause a pressure fault." I went down anyway and opened it. It was full of leaves and a plastic toy. I cleaned it, put it back, reset the heater, and it ran fine for the rest of the season.
The repair didn't need a new coil. It needed a 20-minute walk and a bucket of water. That's not a dig at the tech. It's a dig at the process. We created the emergency by not looking before calling.
The "mcquay cop arrested" search and why facts matter
Here's where I get a little strange. I check our website search logs because I'm nosy. One week, someone found our site by searching "mcquay cop arrested." At first I thought it was a question about a compressor. In HVAC, COP stands for coefficient of performance, and an "arrested" compressor could mean a seized rotor. Maybe someone's chiller had a lockout. I almost wrote a troubleshooting article about it.
Turns out, "mcquay cop arrested" has nothing to do with HVAC. It's a viral headline about a police officer with the same surname. It doesn't tell you anything about a McQuay chiller. That search made me think about a bigger procurement rule: verify your source before you act on a rumor.
I apply that rule to a burner phone, too. If you've ever asked "what is a burner phone," the short answer is a cheap prepaid phone that's hard to trace. That's not automatically a crime. Some contractors use them because they lose their work phone all the time. But if someone gives me a quote over a burner phone and can't give me a business address or a fixed line, I treat that quote as a rumor until I can verify the company exists.
Under FTC rules (ftc.gov), advertising claims must be truthful and backed by evidence. I think repair quotes should operate the same way. If a contractor says "this is the only fix" or "this will never fail again," I want that written on a company letterhead, not texted from a number I can't call back next month.
What about the pressure to act quickly?
I know what you're thinking: "Not all of us have time to check a sensor or open a strainer. Sometimes the tenant is complaining and the CEO is standing behind you." I've been there.
In Q2 2024, we had a cooling problem in a leased suite. The oil pressure fault was back on another chiller. The tenant threatened to withhold rent if we didn't restore cooling by end of day. I had about two hours to make a call: order an after-hours service call that might cost $3,000, or reset the alarm and hope.
I authorized the service call. Even after I signed the purchase order, I second-guessed myself. What if they found a real compressor failure? Those two hours before the tech called back were terrible. In hindsight, I should have set up a remote alarm notification months before, instead of relying on the building's old system.
But notice: the emergency didn't happen because we checked. It happened because we didn't check early enough. The sensor had been flagged in a previous review, and I hadn't scheduled a replacement. My "prevention" belief doesn't mean I never make bad calls. It means I try to make earlier calls, before the price multiplies.
My counterintuitive rule: replace the sensor, not the compressor
The most counterintuitive thing I've learned is this: sometimes you should replace the cheap part precisely because it's the one protecting the expensive part.
An oil pressure sensor is not expensive enough to gamble on. A pool heater strainer is not expensive enough to skip. A 5-minute verification is not expensive enough to ignore. But most people skip them because they don't want to look like they're wasting money on maintenance. The reverse is true. If you ignore the sensor, the compressor will eventually tell you the truth, and that truth will be a $20,000 invoice.
I'm not saying McQuay equipment is perfect. It isn't. I've seen a McQuay compressor fail after a controller malfunction, and once we replaced a heat exchanger because a glycol loop was oversized and the freeze protection failed. That wasn't the equipment's fault; it was a design issue we should have caught in the startup process.
I should also add a sample limitation: my experience is based on maybe 200 purchase orders and two buildings, not a national portfolio. If you're running a 24/7 medical campus or a data center, your risk tolerance is different. You might need to replace parts faster than I would, and you should always follow the manufacturer's guidelines.
Check first, then cut the check
So here's my position, and I'm not going to water it down: preventive verification is the most underrated maintenance practice I buy.
Check the oil pressure before you order the compressor. Clean the strainer before you replace the pool heater coil. Look up the actual fault code before you search "mcquay cop arrested" and assume it's about a failure. And if someone with a burner phone number quotes you a "guaranteed fix," ask for a written warranty and a real address.
You don't need to be an HVAC expert to practice prevention. You just need to be willing to spend five minutes looking before you spend five days explaining why you approved a repair that didn't need to happen.
