Hurricane-Season HVAC Checklist for the Sarasota Area

Before the season — do these once, in spring

Fit a surge protector at the condenser. The single highest-value item on this list. It costs a small fraction of the compressor and control board it protects, and the surges that kill those parts come as often from power being restored as from the storm itself.

Book a service visit. A pre-season check finds the marginal parts — a capacitor reading below its rating, a pitted contactor, a partly blocked condensate drain — while they are cheap and while technicians are available. In the fortnight after a storm, they are not. See HVAC maintenance.

Photograph the equipment. Both units, the data plate with the model and serial numbers, and the surrounding area. If you later make an insurance claim, dated before-images of undamaged equipment are worth having and take two minutes to capture.

Find your disconnect and learn to use it. There is a pull-out or switched box on the wall beside the outdoor unit, separate from the breaker panel. Know where it is and how it comes out now, not in the dark with a storm coming.

Look at where the outdoor unit sits. If it is on a low pad in an area that has taken water before, raising it on a stand ahead of the season is far easier than dealing with a flooded condenser afterwards.

When a storm is named — the 48-hour list

Clear the area around the outdoor unit. Anything that can be picked up by wind within throwing distance of the condenser becomes a projectile aimed at its fins and its refrigerant lines. Garden furniture, planters, loose branches, the grill.

Do not wrap or cover the unit while it is running. Covers are for after shutdown only; a covered condenser that is still operating cannot reject heat.

Secure it if it is not already strapped. Hurricane straps or tie-downs anchoring the condenser to its pad are standard on newer installations and absent on plenty of older ones.

Trim what is overhanging it. Branches above the unit are the most predictable source of damage there is.

Take a second set of photographs once everything is secured.

Before landfall — shut it down properly

Turn the system off at the thermostat first, then at the breaker, then pull the outdoor disconnect. Doing all three is the point: the disconnect isolates the outdoor unit from anything arriving down the line while the grid is in chaos.

Cool the house down beforehand. Running the system hard while you still have power, and then closing the house up, buys hours of tolerable indoor temperature after the power goes.

Now cover the outdoor unit if you are going to, with something breathable and secured, purely to keep debris out of the coil.

Leave it off. The temptation when power flickers back is to get cooling running immediately. That is the moment the system is most exposed.

After the storm — before you switch anything on

Wait for the power to be genuinely stable. Restoration comes with surges and brownouts, and a compressor asked to start on unstable voltage is a compressor at risk. Give it time after the lights stay on.

Check for standing water. If the outdoor unit has been submerged, or the indoor air handler has stood in water, do not power it up. A flooded unit needs inspection before it is energised; running it can turn a repairable system into a replacement and creates a genuine electrical hazard.

Look inside the outdoor coil. Storm-driven sand, leaf litter and vegetation pack between the fins and keep restricting heat rejection long after the visible debris has been swept away. Flattened fins restrict it further. This is the quiet cause of a system that "works but does not cool like it used to" months later.

Look for obvious physical damage — a shifted unit, dented cabinet, bent or severed copper lines, exposed wiring.

Then restore power in order: push the disconnect back in, switch the breaker on, and leave the system powered but off at the thermostat for a few minutes before calling for cooling. That lets the crankcase heater do its job on systems that have one.

If anything looks wrong, leave it off and call. EagleAir answers emergency calls 24 hours a day on (904) 316-9933.

Why storm damage shows up weeks later

This is the part that catches people out, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Electrical damage from a storm is rarely immediate. Surges during the outage and during restoration weaken components without destroying them: a run capacitor drops below its rated capacity, a contactor pits, a compressor start winding takes a hit. The system keeps working. Then it fails outright on the first genuinely hot day, when the load is highest and every contractor in the county is busy.

The tells are worth knowing. A system that hesitates, hums or clicks before starting. A breaker that trips occasionally. A contactor that chatters. Cooling that has quietly got weaker across a season. A capacitor reads its remaining capacity on a meter, so none of this is guesswork — it is measurable at a normal service visit.

This is why EagleAir treats a post-storm inspection as a specific checklist rather than a look-over, and it is the pattern behind a lot of the work in Port Charlotte, Murdock and Punta Gorda since Hurricane Ian came through Charlotte County in September 2022.

If you evacuate

Shut the system down at thermostat, breaker and disconnect as above. The competing concern is humidity: a Florida house closed up with no cooling reaches high indoor humidity within days, and mould follows in the ductwork, drain pan and condensate line.

For a short evacuation, the storm risk wins — leave it off. For a long absence afterwards, get the system checked and back into service as soon as it is safe, rather than leaving the house sealed and warm for weeks. Seasonal owners in Englewood, Rotonda West and Siesta Key should have the condensate line cleared and a drain-pan float switch confirmed working before any long absence, storm or no storm.