The empty week in August costs more than a year of maintenance. Twelve landlord questions, answered.

First, the arithmetic

Picture a two-bedroom near campus renting at a typical Gainesville student rate. The air conditioner fails on August 14, two days after move-in. The tenants call the manager, the manager calls a contractor, and in the busiest week of the HVAC year the earliest visit is three days out. The tenants ask for a rent credit for the days without cooling, one of them threatens to break the lease, and the repair, when it comes, is a compressor on a system that should have been replaced in June when the schedule was open.

Against that, a maintenance plan is two visits a year per unit and a report. We don’t publish plan prices here, so ask for them when you call, but the comparison is not close: the plan costs a fraction of one lost week, and it moves the expensive failures from August to June. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]]

What does a plan actually include for a rental?

Two scheduled visits per unit, a written report, and priority when something fails between them. The visits are the real product. For a Gainesville rental they cover the filter, the evaporator coil, the condensate drain and float switch, the blower, the outdoor coil, refrigerant pressures, electrical connections and amp draws, the thermostat and its settings, and a short note on the unit’s remaining life. Member pricing on repairs and any diagnosis fee are set in the agreement terms; ask for them. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]]

When should the visits happen?

Not in spring and fall, the way a homeowner’s would. A student rental lives on the lease calendar: move-out in early May, a few weeks of vacancy, move-in in mid-August, and a December break when half the building empties. The visit that matters most is the one in June, when the unit is empty or nearly so, the summer hasn’t peaked, and there’s still time to replace a system that won’t make it. The second visit fits in December or January, when the heat side gets its one real test of the year.

What does the June sweep find in a typical Gainesville building?

A pattern we see in building after building:

• Filters that were never changed during the lease, caked with the oak and pine bloom that begins in late January.
• Condensate drains clogged with the biofilm this climate grows, often with the float switch bypassed by a previous repair.
• Thermostats set to 60 with the fan on, which freezes the coil and runs the compressor around the clock.
• Coils in apartments with pets or smokers that are fouled enough to drop the capacity by a third.
• Capacitors reading low, which is the August failure waiting to happen.
• Two or three units per building that are past fifteen years and should be replaced in July, not patched in August.

Who calls whom when it breaks?

The tenant calls us directly, using a number on the lease or a sticker on the air handler closet. We dispatch, diagnose, and call you or your manager with the price before anything beyond the diagnosis happens. You approve by phone or text. The tenant never holds the invoice, and you’re never surprised by it.

Call 866-266-5709

What should be on the lease about HVAC?

Three things make our job and yours easier: a filter clause saying who changes it and how often, a thermostat clause with a minimum setpoint, and a clause requiring tenants to report water around the air handler the day they see it. The third one prevents the ceiling repair under a second-floor air handler, which costs more than the air conditioner.

Should I replace before a tenant moves in or wait for a failure?

If the June report says a system is past fifteen years, has a weak compressor or runs an older refrigerant, replace in July. A planned replacement is a single day with no tenant in the unit. A failure in August is a week of calls, a rent credit and the same replacement under pressure. On a building with several aging units, we can stage replacements across two or three summers so the cash outlay is predictable.

Does the plan cover a whole building or individual units?

Either. A fourplex can be one account with four units; a thirty-unit complex gets a per-unit report and a building summary that ranks the units by risk. Managers with several buildings get one account and one invoice with everything itemized by address.

What about rebates and efficiency on rental equipment?

Gainesville Regional Utilities offers paid duct testing and energy surveys that apply to rental property, and GRU’s gas conversion rebates apply where gas service exists. Clay Electric’s heat pump rebate applies to member accounts in the co-op’s territory around the city. Whether a program pays through the installer or the account holder varies; ask where Cook’s enrollment stands for your property. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]] Federal efficiency tax credits ended for equipment installed after 2025 and are not part of the math.

Can one company handle both my student rentals and my own house?

Yes, and it’s common. Owners who live in Haile Plantation or Northwest Gainesville and hold rentals near campus put everything on one account; the rentals get lease-calendar timing, the house gets spring and fall, and one report covers all of it.

What if my tenants aren’t students?

A family rental in a single-family house behaves like an owner-occupied home: the visits shift to March and October, and the thermostat issues mostly disappear. The plan is the same; the calendar changes.

How do I start?

Call 866-266-5709 with the addresses and the number of units. We schedule a first sweep, which doubles as the baseline report, and build the plan from what we find. Our trucks run from the Palm Coast headquarters at 37 Fairmont Ln, about two hours out, so sweeps are booked as blocks and repairs are dispatched in call order around the clock.