HVAC

Who actually maintains the HVAC equipment

There is no single rule here. Your association's CC&Rs and bylaws assign maintenance responsibility, and that assignment is what controls, not what seems fair or convenient. In most condominiums, equipment that serves the whole building, a shared rooftop unit, a clubhouse system, a central boiler, is a common area or common element the association maintains. Equipment that serves a single unit, a wall-mounted air handler, a window unit, a furnace inside one owner's walls, is often the owner's responsibility instead.

Do not assume. Read the actual maintenance-responsibility section of your governing documents for HVAC specifically before telling an owner whose job a repair is.

Whether HVAC belongs in the reserve study

Common-area HVAC equipment usually qualifies for the reserve study, but only if it clears a specific four-part test, not just because the association maintains it.

"the expense of maintaining a component must be the association's financial responsibility... only components with a limited useful life are recognized as a reserve expense"

Source: National Reserve Study Standards, explained, Association Reserves

The full test also requires a predictable remaining life expectancy and a cost above the association's set threshold. HVAC equipment the association is obligated to maintain can still fail one of these four tests, for example, if it doesn't yet have a predictable end of life, and still be a real maintenance obligation your board has to track and fund even though it never shows up as a reserve line item.

Why a skipped service call is more than a comfort problem

It's tempting to treat a delayed HVAC service call as a scheduling problem. It isn't only that.

"possible fiscal instability," "loss of facility use," and "hampering program activities"

Source: Deferred Capital Renewal and Deferred Maintenance, APPA

Postponed HVAC maintenance is deferred maintenance like any other: maintenance that should have happened and didn't. If a failure gets bad enough to affect a building's habitability, it can also reach Fannie Mae's threshold for a repair serious enough to make an entire project ineligible for financing, not just the affected unit. Treat a dead HVAC system in occupied space as an operational and financial issue for the whole association, not a comfort complaint from one owner.

Set the schedule from the equipment, not a generic calendar

No single service interval applies to every HVAC system across every state and climate. The right schedule for a given unit comes from that equipment's own manufacturer specifications, confirmed by a licensed HVAC contractor, the same way a board would check a locally adopted code before quoting a fixed number for fire or electrical systems. Log each service visit; that log feeds the condition assessment your next reserve study will use to re-rate the equipment's remaining life.