Lifespan of HVAC Equipment

How long should that equipment last - chillers, pumps, packaged DX rooftops etc? There are many reasons to want to know, including energy management. After all, if you have to replace equipment anyway - the marginal cost to upgrade can be reduced to the real cost in the cash flows for IRR analysis. 

There's a free resource for that, courtesy of dues-paying and research-supporting ASHRAE members worldwide. Here's the link: http://xp20.ashrae.org/publicdatabase/system_service_life.asp 

This comes from ASHRAE Applications Handbook 2011, Chapter 37 if you refer to those tomes. 

Many of us referred to ASHRAE's 1978 standard answers in the handbooks for years. Given the manufacturing and technology changes since then, research project TRP-1237 (Abramson et al. 2005) seeded the above-linked database to give this an update. 27,000 entries later, we have a much improved resource. 

So the next time you are wondering if an upgrade is an energy-only deal, find out the life of the equipment first and get the whole picture.