MARINE CORPS AIR STATION YUMA, Az. -- With the summer heat wave hitting Yuma earlier than normal this year, many have cranked up the air conditioning in hopes of finding some relief.
When the AC doesn’t work, a state of panic and anger can soon arise as they imagine it taking a week or more before it is repaired, but the technicians at the air conditioning and heating repair shop work to make sure nobody is left out of the cold.
Robert Varela, the AC shop supervisor, explained that there were roughly 3,500 AC units on station, ranging from industrial commercial units for office buildings and barracks to residential units in base housing and room chillers in the individual barracks rooms.
The AC shop currently has 14 employees, of whom only 10 are technicians trained to repair units, which can sometimes cause problems in responding in a timely manner.
The response time usually takes two hours at the most, said Varela, but from the time they respond to the time when the units are actually repaired are two different things, especially if more units go out in a short period of time than technicians are on duty to repair them.
Some problems require small repairs or adjustments that take no more than 15 minutes, but other larger problems can take up to two days to repair, depending on the availability of the part, said Varela. In a case where a technician is already working on a large problem and they get a call for another unit that needs repair, that technician will usually respond to the second call and fix it if possible before returning to the first job.
Larry Gamache, the station AC and boiler mechanic lead, said they often times experience a larger workload during the months of July, August, and September.
“The reason is the humidity,” said Gamache. An air conditioning unit, when it’s working, will normally remove heat. When the humidity goes up, it has to remove humidity as well, so it’s working twice as hard.”
Setting the thermostat below 75 degrees, which is lower than many of the units are designed to work, can compound this problem.
The AC units are designed to cycle on and off, sustaining a constant temperature, and setting the temperature lower than the unit can achieve keeps it from shutting off, wearing out the motor, said Varela.
The AC shop has two shifts that work from 6:30 am to 4 pm and from 3-11pm, with a technician on duty overnight to deal with emergencies that may arise, but a Marine without AC in the barracks doesn’t constitute enough of an emergency to warrant immediate service.
There’s certain buildings that do have priority,” said Varela.
Varela said building 408 and building 328 are examples of emergency situations because of the computer equipment present that can be damaged if not in a cool room.
Station regulations say AC units should be set no lower than 78 degrees, and Varela agreed that much lower than that will cause the unit to break soon after.
In order to prevent an AC unit from breaking Varela suggested setting the thermostat at about 80 degrees and adding air circulation with a fan to keep comfortable.