Calculator · No sign-in
General Downtime Calculator
Compare an hourly outage estimate and the repair costs that go with it.
Choose a building-specific calculatorPrivate, browser-only calculation. Blank means unknown; zero means none.
Your estimate
Replace calculator answers with an example? Contact details will stay unchanged.
Illustrative example, not a facility result.
Time the affected service cannot operate. Use elapsed service interruption time, not technician labor hours.
Estimate service interruption with the selected spares level, not technician labor time. No onsite spares matches Today and locks the comparison; previous stocked-spares answers are retained. This is an assumption, not a response-time promise.
Use an estimate for the affected service only. Exclude rental, emergency labor and return visits if adding them separately below. An equipment repair rate is not the facility loss per outage hour.
Use the number of similar outages in the result period. Annual records are included once; only repair costs are multiplied by this count. In hourly or per-event records mode, the selected service loss is also multiplied. This is a scenario assumption, not a failure prediction.
Repair costs to include
Select only costs not already counted above.
Regional T3 planning allowances from the existing calculator, not a binding quote or a promise of service coverage. Base covers the other California counties; North/SF covers San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. The default is Base, matching the original calculator. Confirm the applicable rate before relying on an estimate.
Changing area updates only allowances still linked to regional pricing. Your overrides are preserved; use the reset button to restore a regional allowance.
Temporary equipment
Elapsed days awaiting approval to purchase the failed part and delivery of that part. Do not add overlapping periods twice. This excludes diagnosis, installation, testing and approvals unrelated to purchasing the part. Temporary equipment may restore service sooner.
A matching, usable part onsite can avoid purchasing approval and delivery wait. With stocked spares, edit the remaining wait for this failure. No onsite spares always matches Today; stored overrides return when a stocked-spares level is selected.
Additional days for diagnosis, repair and testing, excluding the parts wait. This time is held equal in both scenarios.
Daily rental charge. This scenario rents equipment for the full parts wait plus other repair time. Exclude costs already included in the hourly loss estimate.
Upfront allowance for 3 people × 8 hours installing and 3 people × 8 hours removing: 48 person-hours, plus 6 technician-day truck charges. Both scenarios include this once when rental is needed. Excludes rental days, initial fault diagnosis and separate part-installation return visits. Replace with a quote for a different crew or scope.
With stocked spares, choose No only if temporary equipment is avoided altogether. No onsite spares includes the same rental as Today. The prior choice is retained for stocked-spares levels. Rental duration is parts wait plus other repair time.
Emergency labor and installation
Initial service allowance, default 8 person-hours, including diagnosis and routine installation of electrical boards or most sensors within that time. The starting rate assumes overtime. Spares do not remove this allowance; both scenarios use the same hours and rate. Enter only extra installation work below, excluding labor already covered by this allowance or a return visit.
Always equals the Today hours. Onsite spares do not replace initial emergency diagnosis.
Overtime allowance: 1.5 × the regional T3 standard planning rate derived from the existing calculator pricing table. This applies to the entered first-day emergency hours in both scenarios. For regular hours, use the quoted regular rate; for mixed regular and overtime hours, enter the total labor charge divided by total hours. The multiplier is already included in this field and is not applied again. This is not facility payroll; rental installation/removal and return-visit allowances retain standard pricing.
Optional work beyond the initial service allowance and labor already included in a return visit. Zero means no additional time. These hours are charged equally in both scenarios: onsite spares do not remove installation work. Fans and compressors require planning and a return trip; retain those trips under Return visits. Do not enter elapsed rental days here.
Starts at the regional standard rate for planned work. Replace it with the applicable quoted regular, overtime or blended rate. The entered rate is applied once to additional person-hours in both scenarios. Truck charges are handled by the return-visit allowance, not added again here.
Return visits
Extra trips after the initial response. Enter zero if none. Exclude visits already included in another labor charge.
Stocked-spares levels avoid up to 1, 3 or 5 separately billed returns, but never the planned installation visits retained below. Routine boards and most sensors may fit the initial allowance. Fans and compressors need planning and a return trip. A manual comparison cannot fall below the planned visit count. No onsite spares always matches Today.
Visits that remain necessary even with the failed part onsite. Use at least one for a fan or compressor replacement requiring a planned return. Enter zero for routine work completed within the initial allowance. These visits are included within Today returns, not added on top; Today returns must be at least this count. Spares cannot reduce the comparison below this count.
Starts at four hours at the regional T3 standard rate plus one $250 truck charge. This is a separate return-to-install allowance, not rental removal. Exclude work already included in first-day labor or another charge.
Facility and coverage context · optional
These answers support a review. They do not add penalties, assume an insurance payment, or erase a loss already entered.
Save or reopen this scenario
Answers remain in memory until this page closes or reloads. A downloaded file keeps calculator answers only, not contact details. Stored comparison answers are retained even when No onsite spares locks the displayed values to Today. Anyone with the file can read those answers. Older calculator versions cannot be reopened here.
The point
Repair time is rarely the problem
At a San Jose hotel, an active service call sat paused with the clock running because nobody could confirm who approved the original call. Every hour of that was a decision, not a repair.
At a North Bay school campus, every board that failed could have gone in on the first visit if it had been on a shelf. Instead: five more trips and roughly three months. The parts were never rare.
One recent end-of-life case, hit without a plan, added about $78,000 in rentals, $280,000 for a rushed replacement, and $3.5M in lost revenue.
A real one
Five trips to finish one repair
A North Bay school campus lost power. The main repair was done and billed. Then the boards started failing — and this equipment reports faults one at a time, so fixing the first is what makes the next one show up. Each fault was another dispatch, another order, another wait.
| Comparison | Reported event: no spares onsite | Illustrative onsite-spares alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Main repair after the power outage | $29,559 | $29,559 |
| Board replacements after it | 5 more trips, one alarm at a time | May avoid parts-related return trips |
| Total repair bill | $64,833 | Not measured; diagnosis and parts still cost money |
| Time until fully repaired | Roughly three months | Shorter parts wait; not a completion guarantee |
The event figures are reported in CCMS source material. The onsite-spares column is a what-if comparison, not measured savings. It assumes the failed part is stocked, compatible and safe to install. First-day diagnostics are unchanged.
Onsite stock can avoid purchase-approval and delivery waits for a covered failed part, plus a return trip to install it. It does not reveal every hidden fault at once or guarantee a one-visit repair.
This is one job, not a forecast for another building. The calculator starts with one return visit. Replace that assumption with the expected trips for the failure being modeled.
What the whole system costs
Every deliverable in the CARE system, itemized, comes to $35,475. As a Training bundle it is $9,995. Carried inside a Max CARE PM agreement it is $0 — it is simply how the agreement works. See the full breakdown.
Questions
The things people actually ask
Is the HVAC downtime calculator free?
Yes, and it does not ask for an email address.
Is anything I enter sent to CCMS?
Calculator answers stay in this browser and are not sent to CCMS or added to an assessment request. They are not saved automatically. Download Scenario saves a local file that you can reopen; anyone with that file can read it. Contact details are entered and submitted separately in the request form.
Are the figures a quote?
No. They are planning estimates meant to size the problem, not to price a job.
What does it model?
Compare outage hours at an entered hourly loss rate, plus any selected temporary-equipment, first-day emergency labor and return-visit costs. Similar outages per year set the annual estimate. Spares assumptions can shorten purchase-approval and parts-delivery waits and avoid separate return trips; initial diagnosis is unchanged.
Want this modeled on your actual equipment?
An HVAC Health Assessment reviews operating condition, available alarm history and parts exposure on one critical asset. Cost and scheduling inputs still come from the facility team.
Request an HVAC Health Assessment
A senior technician reviews one critical HVAC asset. No cost for qualified facilities in the greater Bay Area.
Before scheduling: CCMS confirms site and equipment fit, then arranges customer/credit onboarding. This request does not book a visit or authorize paid work. Please do not include credit, financial, or patient records here.
