In San Marco the question is not what's wrong with the air handler, it's how high it sits

The short version

San Marco was laid out in 1926 as a Mediterranean Revival suburb on the Southbank, and the streets nearest the St. Johns sit low enough that a strong east wind on a spring tide puts water in the road. Matthew in 2016, Irma in 2017 and Nicole in 2022 each pushed the river past its banks here. The equipment that fails after those events is almost never the equipment that was elevated. So on a San Marco call we look at height before we look at anything else.

The longer version, block by block

The neighborhood breaks into three exposure levels that call for three different plans.

Riverfront and the first blocks inland. AE flood zones on most lots. Equipment at grade here has already been wet at least once since 2016. Every replacement we do on these streets goes on a stand set from the lot’s flood elevation, and the air handler moves up inside the house, to a platform in a utility room or into the attic with a proper pan and float switch.

The core around the Square. Older stucco houses with retrofit ducts, hall-closet air handlers and condensers tucked against the garage. Flooding is rarer, but drainage after heavy rain is slow and pads sit in puddles. A modest stand and a redirected downspout solve a lot.

The newer streets and the apartment blocks toward Hendricks Avenue. Mid-century and later construction, more conventional systems, less water exposure. The calls here are ordinary: capacitors, drain lines, aging equipment from the 1990s and 2000s.

What tidal water does that rain doesn’t

River water is brackish. A condenser that stood in it carries salt into every crevice of the coil and the electrical compartment, and that salt keeps working after the water is gone. A rinse the same day helps. A full electrical teardown and coil wash within the week helps more. Waiting until it fails is the expensive choice.

What drives the price

For a San Marco job the variables are specific:

Factor	Why it moves the number
Stand height and engineering	Taller stands need anchoring and sometimes a permit note; line sets get longer
Moving the air handler up	A new platform, drain route and return path inside a 1920s house
Historic character	No district review applies, but placement that respects the streetscape is still worth planning
Flood-damaged electricals	Cleaning and testing versus replacing the control side outright
Salt exposure	Coated coils and sealed contactors for riverfront addresses

We give one price before work starts, and the FEMA zone for the address is part of the estimate conversation, not a surprise afterward. Replacements qualify for JEA’s heating and cooling rebate when the equipment meets the program tier; ask about the current program cycle and its dates. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]]

Scheduling, and the 24-hour part

San Marco is about fifty-eight miles from our shop at 37 Fairmont Ln in Palm Coast, roughly seventy minutes up I-95 to the Southbank. After a flood event, expect calls to be triaged by water depth, with the houses that took the most water first. The rest of the year it is ordinary dispatch: same-day in most cases, any hour for a no-cool, and never an after-hours charge. Cook’s is family-owned, a Lennox dealer, and repairs every major brand.