A high JEA bill and a sneezing household are usually the same complaint

What the August JEA bill is telling you

A Jacksonville electric bill in August is high for everyone. JEA serves roughly a million people across Duval and parts of Nassau, Clay and St. Johns, and most of them are cooling a house through 73-degree dew points for twelve hours a day. The question is not whether the bill is high. It is whether yours is higher than the house next door, with the same thermostat setting, and whether the people inside are sneezing, congested or waking up with headaches.

If both are true, they almost always share one cause: conditioned air is leaving the house and unconditioned air is coming in. Through leaky supply ducts in a 130-degree attic. Through a return that was cut into a crawlspace in 1985. Through a belly board torn open under a manufactured home. The system runs longer, which is the bill, and the replacement air carries attic dust, crawlspace moisture, pollen and whatever lives in the insulation, which is the sneezing.

Sometimes the cause is the opposite, an oversized system in a tight 2005 house that never runs long enough to dry the air, and the symptoms are mold and mustiness rather than dust. Either way, the bill and the air are one diagnosis, and the assessment is designed to make it.

Houses and businesses: the same science, different problems

Residential assessments in Jacksonville are about envelope, duct and humidity. The pre-1950 core of Riverside, Avondale, Springfield and Murray Hill leaks air and has ducts that were added decades later. The 1950s to 1970s ranches of Arlington and the Westside have attic duct that leaks. The post-2000 subdivisions in Oceanway, Baymeadows and out to Yulee are tight and often oversized. Each gets a different first recommendation.

Commercial assessments add people. An office in a Baymeadows business park, a restaurant in San Marco Square, a medical suite near the Southside hospitals or a shop on Edgewood Avenue in Murray Hill has occupants exhaling carbon dioxide, equipment off-gassing, and a mechanical system that was supposed to bring in a measured amount of outdoor air and often does not. Rooftop units with stuck economizer dampers, undersized filtration for the occupancy, and humidity problems from kitchen or sterilization processes are the commercial pattern. The fixes involve the building’s mechanical system more than the envelope, and they are scheduled around business hours.

How the assessment runs

1. Conversation. Who is affected, when, in which rooms. What the bill has done. What has already been tried.
2. Readings. Relative humidity in several rooms, temperature at the registers and returns, static pressure in the duct system, carbon dioxide in occupied commercial spaces, particulate counts where allergies are the complaint, carbon monoxide wherever there is a gas appliance.
3. Duct leakage test, where the readings point at the ducts.
4. Inspection. Coil, drain, filter slot, return location, attic or crawlspace duct condition, fresh-air provisions on commercial units.
5. Report. Readings, interpretation and ranked recommendations.
6. The work, if you choose it. Duct sealing or repair, return correction, media filtration, a whole-home or commercial dehumidifier, UV at the coil, ventilation, and in some cases a right-sized system at the next replacement.

Schedule an indoor air assessment

How long each step takes

A residential assessment takes about two hours; a commercial one a half day, longer for multiple systems. The report follows within a few days. Duct sealing and filtration upgrades are typically a one-day job. A whole-home dehumidifier install is usually a day. Commercial ventilation corrections depend on the equipment and are scheduled for evenings or weekends where the business cannot close. The assessment is the gating item; nothing is quoted before it is done, because nothing should be.

Line items you’ll see on an IAQ proposal

• The assessment itself, with the report
• Duct sealing, by the run or by the system, and any replaced flex or boots
• Return modifications: enlarged grille, relocated return, new return duct
• Filtration: media cabinet, whole-home air cleaner, or commercial filter rack upgrade
• Dehumidification: whole-home or commercial unit, ducted and drained
• UV coil lamp
• Ventilation: fresh-air intake with damper, or an energy recovery ventilator for very tight homes and occupied businesses
• Electrical and condensate work the above requires
• Permits where required

No prices appear here because the assessment determines the scope, and a number before the readings would be invented. Financing with low monthly payments is available on new high-efficiency equipment and quoted in writing. Ask whether JEA offers any rebate on dehumidification or ventilation equipment. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]]

After the work

The bill is the scoreboard. A sealed, properly filtered, properly humidified house in Jacksonville runs shorter cooling cycles for the same comfort, and the difference shows on the September statement. The sneezing is harder to graph, but a hygrometer under 55 percent and a filter that is gray instead of yellow-green at the end of March are the signs it worked. Cook’s maintains the equipment it installs on the same two-visit schedule as the heat pump it serves, and the dehumidifier filter and UV lamp are on that checklist.