£100m a Year is The Estimated Price Businesses Have to Pay for Failing to Do Regular Air Leak Checks

If you asked an economist to name one aspect costing UK businesses, they would mention poor maintenance. Indeed, many UK businesses are losing money due to ignoring simple maintenance practices, which could be fixed by simple maintenance culture.

To keep your business running efficiently, you want to ensure a plausible production facility, and this includes regular servicing to eliminate energy waste, reduce employee injury, save cost, and many more. 

To identify the effect of air leaks in the UK, Direct Air carried out a study to determine just how much air leakages are costing businesses and what can be done to prevent it and we take a look at some of the key points in this article. 

Are UK Businesses Really Losing £100m Per Year?

It should not come as a shock that UK businesses could be losing so much. Perhaps, the blame goes to ignorance playing a huge role in the increasing cost companies are recording in their books. 

Did you know? You can save up to £37,000 or even more each year. Studies show an estimated 20%-40% of generated air becomes wastes in production facilities. No thanks to air leaks, but this could be mitigated or eliminated through strict maintenance practices.

Your small yet poorly maintained air system could be increasing the costs in your books by £2-7 each business day. And now, the heartbreaker! UK businesses suffer at least £100m loss to air leaks that could be prevented cost-effectively. 

Now, one would wonder why your business is sitting back amidst these fierce figures capable of crippling the UK economy as a whole. While you should be focusing on innovation, small air leaks are termite-feeding down your business.

Why UK Businesses Should Put an End to Losing £100m to Leaks

Why should you invest in preventive air leak maintenance? Following the common saying that prevention is better than cure, below are what you could be enjoying when you put an end to an air leak in your business:

• Onsite Safety

If you review your company policy, you will discover that page where you mentioned “safety”. Well, with a preventive maintenance culture, you can bring your safety policy to reality. You want the worker happy, sound, and fit for work. Where workers are affected due to poor working conditions, your productivity dwindles notably. Get rid of air leaks to keep the machines active and properly functional to ensure enhanced employee performance.

• Unnecessary Expenses

One item you dislike in your books is ‘expenses’. If you had your way, you would completely erase the section highlighting the business’ expenses on unproductive stuff. Air leak is one such unproductive stuff that merely sets your business back. 

Meanwhile, that 3mm hole you overlook or cover with your chewing gum is hitting you with a loss of at least £600 in one year. Multiply this cost by multiple holes, and you would find yourself screaming, “How!?”

• Energy Loss and Pollution

Energy loss can be daunting. How about you get rid of it? When you get rid of unnecessary energy loss, you are erasing your company’s name from the black book of companies haunted by the dreadful air leak. Hey, that leak is affecting our atmosphere! 

You would go on live TV to proclaim how much you dream of green earth. What about beginning with eliminating the harmful substance your business disperses into thin air with a preventive air solution?

Effective Measures that Ensure You Cut Cost

It seems you are already more than willing to fix your leaks. While hiring that reliable maintenance service, you could be doing the following within your capacity to prevent compressor air leaks:

Manually

If you are not ready to invest in automation, here you go with manual methods:

• Your eyes. Your eyes can help to detect air leaks. Perhaps, if you feature more giant eyeballs, you could be detecting even the tiniest leaks. You would have to be extra careful to detect just 1% of the many leaks on your pipework. The common method businesses use to detect air leaks with their eyes is to mix water and soap in a bucket, work the mixture across the pipework using cloth or sponge and wait for the bubbling spots. For every bubbling spot, there you have your haunting leak. However, this method is far from effective.

• Your ears. Like your eyes, your ears can help you detect air leaks. The larger your ears, the better, perhaps. But regardless of your ear sizes, you can’t expect a good result when detecting air leaks during or outside business hours. Moreover, every noisy machine needs to be disabled to increase the effectiveness of your ears.

Technology

Avoid straining your eyes and ears with technology.

• Ultrasonic detection. The technology recognizes air leak problems and solutions with the ultrasonic air leak detection device. It can detect compressor leaks perfectly during business hours and regardless of the noise. Again, no need to strain your eyes and ears.

Simple Maintenance Practices that Enhance Putting an End to Air Leak Problems

Your silent air compressor can perform even better when you prevent leaks in the following ways:

• Rubber component inspection

Your valve, O-rings, and other rubber parts can wear and cause invisible leaks. The preventive measure is to replace them in a timely manner or fix any broken parts.

• Replacing broken parts

Unfortunately, fixing may not stop leaks or does not stop leaks. In this case, it is advisable to replace worn components instead of repairing them. Do not wait until the parts become too bad for the machine. You may lose more than you can make within the period.

• Look and fix loose connection points

Sometimes, a simple fix works, especially if some parts went out of place. You find and place them properly to reduce energy wastage. Check for loose nuts and other components and fix them.

• Fixing or replacing tubes, pipes, and hoses

Your quiet air or low noise compressor can perform even better when you repair or replace broken tubes, pipes and hoses. When inspecting these components manually for air leaks, you want to be extremely sensitive or miss the leaking spots.