Rooftop unit repair or replacement: the math for a Palm Coast business

Two columns on a Friday in July

	Repair the 12-year-old rooftop unit	Replace it
Today	Back in business this afternoon	Temporary cooling if possible; new unit in days, not hours
This summer	The next failure is a coin flip	Warranty covers the parts; the crew knows the unit
Operating cost	Same efficiency as 2013	Lower power draw every month FPL bills you
Downtime risk	Each failure closes the store again	One planned closure, or none with a weekend crane
Cash flow	Small check now	Financing with monthly payments; possible rebate on high-efficiency equipment
Right when	Compressor is healthy and the fault is a part	Compressor or coil has failed, or this is the third call this year

That’s the conversation Jerry has on a roof several times every summer. There’s no universal answer; a restaurant and a dental practice weigh downtime differently, and a tenant with two years on a lease weighs it differently from an owner. What we can promise is that both columns get real numbers before you choose.

Signs a commercial system needs attention

Businesses notice HVAC problems later than homeowners, because nobody lives there at 3 a.m. Watch for these:

• The thermostat is set at 72 and the room reads 78 by 2 p.m. The unit can’t keep up with afternoon load. Dirty condenser, low charge or a failing compressor.
• Customers comment on the humidity. A packaged unit cycling short on a mid-70s dew point leaves a store cool and clammy. Common in oversized units on strip centers.
• Breakers, belts and noises. A squeal at startup is a belt; a hum with no fan is a capacitor; a breaker trip in July is a compressor pulling too much current.
• Power bills out of line with the neighbors. FPL bills for similar storefronts should look alike. If yours doesn’t, something’s running too long.
• Water stains on the ceiling tile. A clogged drain on a rooftop or a ceiling-hung unit, usually in September.
• The same unit, the third call. The repair-or-replace table above starts to apply.

What waiting costs a Palm Coast business

Homeowners pay for a limping system in comfort and electricity. Businesses pay in revenue, and the math is different.

1. A restaurant kitchen at European Village or Town Center runs its own heat load on top of a Palm Coast July. A unit at 80 percent capacity means a dining room that empties by 7 p.m. and a line that’s dangerous by 9.
2. A medical or dental suite near AdventHealth Palm Coast can’t see patients in a 78-degree exam room, and health care is now the county’s largest employer. A down unit is a day of cancellations.
3. Retail loses the afternoon. Shoppers walk into a warm store and walk out.
4. Offices lose productivity quietly, and the server closet loses hardware loudly.
5. Everyone pays FPL for a system that runs long and delivers little, every month the fix is deferred.

A deferred repair in commercial HVAC rarely stays the same size. A weak capacitor becomes a failed compressor; a clogged drain becomes a ceiling and a mold complaint.

Schedule a commercial visit

What the work involves

Repair. Same-day dispatch during business hours, scheduled around your open hours wherever possible. Diagnosis measured, not guessed: amps, pressures, belt tension, economizer function, drain and pan. Price before the work. Common packaged-unit parts on the truck.

Maintenance. Quarterly or semiannual visits depending on runtime: coils washed, belts and pulleys checked, filters changed, drains flushed, economizers and controls tested, refrigerant verified, a written condition report per unit. Restaurant and salon units get the shorter interval. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY: commercial agreement tiers and pricing]]

Replacement and installation. Load calculation for the actual space and use, equipment matched to the roof curb or a curb adapter, crane scheduled for off-hours, electrical and controls brought to code, permit and inspection, startup with commissioning data. Rooftop packaged units, split systems, ductless for server rooms and additions, and the ductwork to go with them.

Lennox commercial equipment is what we install. We repair and maintain Carrier, Bryant, Trane and whatever your landlord’s last contractor left on the roof.

Preventing the repeat call

Palm Coast commercial roofs are a hard place for equipment. Full sun from May to October, salt air anywhere east of I-95 and especially along the A1A corridor through Flagler Beach and the Hammock, lightning most summer afternoons, and a hurricane or tropical storm about every two and a half years.

What keeps units alive up there:

• Coil rinses on a schedule, monthly in summer for waterfront properties.
• Surge protection at every unit. A control board is cheaper to protect than to replace.
• Hurricane prep, meaning units strapped to curbs and a post-storm inspection before restart. After Matthew, Irma and Milton the roofs we’d checked were the roofs that restarted cleanly.
• Drain treatment before September, the wettest month of the year.
• A maintenance agreement with the same crew, so the technician on the roof already knows the unit’s history.

We’re a family-run Palm Coast company with a shop on Fairmont Lane. Ask who your point of contact will be; it should be a person who knows your buildings, not an account queue.