Commercial Installation & Replacement

Almost always. A single packaged unit serving one zone comes out on a Saturday and the zone is conditioned again before Monday. Larger scopes get phased so only part of the building is affected at a time, and where a space genuinely cannot lose conditioning — a data closet, a lab, a restaurant kitchen mid-service — we price temporary equipment into the phase rather than pretending nobody will notice.

Access first: whether a crane can reach the roof from a legal setup, whether the street needs occupancy approval, whether the load has to break down for a freight elevator. Then the curb, since a footprint mismatch means an adapter and sometimes structural review. Then the distribution, because new equipment on undersized duct will not deliver what the submittal promised. Then efficiency tier, controls scope and how much of the work has to happen outside business hours. The equipment itself is rarely the variable that moves a proposal most.

Variable refrigerant flow runs small refrigerant lines from an outdoor unit to many indoor units, each controlled separately, with heat recovery models moving heat from a zone that is too warm to one that is too cold. It earns its place where duct is expensive or impossible — a converted loft, a landmarked facade, a floor-by-floor tenant fit-out, a building with no shaft space left. It also phases beautifully, since a VRF system can be extended as leases turn over. ICS is a Mitsubishi Electric Diamond contractor and installs this equipment regularly.

Yes, as part of the scope. That covers the pick plan, the rigger, the insurance the property requires from everyone on the lift, sidewalk and lane closures where the setup needs them, and the timing so the pick does not land in the middle of a tenant move-in. In Manhattan and dense Hudson County blocks this is often the longest lead item on the whole job, which is why it gets planned before equipment is ordered.

Rarely exactly. Footprints, supply and return openings and gas and electrical entries all move between generations, so most changeouts get a fabricated curb adapter that matches the old opening to the new unit and keeps the duct connections straight. We make ours in-house from the field-measured curb. A poorly made adapter is a leak path and a static pressure penalty for the life of the equipment.

Electrical disconnects and feeders, roofing flashing and patching, fire alarm shutdown and smoke detector duct devices, sprinkler in the ceiling we are working above, and the general contractor’s own schedule if there is one. We attend the coordination meetings and put our own dates in writing. Where we hold the duct and controls as well as the mechanical, there is simply less coordination to get wrong.

We measure it before answering. Static pressure readings on the existing system tell us what the duct can actually pass, which is often well below what the new unit expects. Sometimes the fix is a trunk resize and better transitions at the unit; sometimes it is opening up returns that were undersized when the building was built. Either way it is part of the proposal rather than a change order discovered on start-up day.

Start-up to the manufacturer’s procedure, airflow measured and adjusted at the unit and the terminals, refrigerant charge verified by superheat and subcooling against design, gas input and combustion checked on heating equipment, and every control sequence exercised — occupied, unoccupied, morning warm-up, economizer changeover — rather than assumed. You receive the readings, the as-built adjustments and the inspection sign-offs as one package.