Late January, when the oaks let go: the Gainesville air quality calendar

The calendar that drives the calls

Gainesville’s air quality year has a rhythm that any allergist in town could recite.

Late January through March: laurel oak and water oak pollen, with pine joining in February. It coats cars on every street in the Duckpond and Haile Plantation, loads filters in three weeks, and sends allergy sufferers indoors to discover that indoors is not much better.

April and May: Florida’s oak season tapers, grass pollen rises, and the first humid weeks arrive. Houses that were comfortable in March start to feel close.

June through September: 72-degree dew points, 48 inches of annual rain concentrated in these months, and indoor humidity that climbs toward 60 percent in any house whose air conditioner is oversized or whose ducts leak. Mold shows up in closets and on supply registers. Student rentals, with their high turnover and uneven maintenance, are the worst.

October through December: the first heating cycles bake dust off strips and coils, and the dirty-sock smell appears in heat pump homes. Relief from pollen, but not from the questions.

Air quality work in Gainesville follows that calendar. The call in February is about filtration. The call in July is about humidity. The call in November is about the coil.

Who calls Cook’s about air

• Allergy and asthma households in the canopy neighborhoods: the Duckpond, Pleasant Street, Millhopper Forest, Haile Plantation, Blues Creek. Many have moved from somewhere with less pollen and are startled.
• Landlords and property managers near campus with mold complaints and humidity readings they cannot explain.
• Owners of historic homes on crawlspaces whose houses smell like the ground after rain.
• Medical and research families who want measured numbers, not reassurance, because they work at Shands, the VA or in the UF labs and are used to data.
• Buyers of newer houses in Oakmont and Tioga who assumed a tight new home meant clean air and found that it means trapped air.

Three Gainesville scenarios

The Duckpond Victorian in February

A 1915 house north of downtown, retrofit ducts in the attic, a one-inch filter slot at the air handler, returns running under the floor. The family’s allergies are at their worst indoors. We measure particle counts and duct leakage, seal the returns that are drawing crawlspace air, install a media filter cabinet that can hold a dense filter without starving the blower, and add a whole-house dehumidifier for the summer the family has not yet had in the house. The pollen is still outside; it is no longer inside.

The Midtown rental in July

A four-bedroom unit near University Corners, oversized air conditioner, 68 percent indoor humidity on the hygrometer, mold on the bathroom ceiling and a tenant complaint. The equipment is cooling the air too fast to dry it. We correct the fan settings, confirm the drain, recommend a right-sized replacement when the unit ages out, and install a dehumidifier in the meantime so the landlord is not repainting every August.

The Oakmont two-story in October

A 2021 house, foam-sealed attic, variable-speed system, and a family who smell something stale every time the heat runs. The house is so tight it needs a controlled source of fresh air. We add a ventilating dehumidifier that brings in filtered outdoor air and dries it, and a UV lamp over the coil to stop the biofilm that caused the smell. New houses have air problems too; they are just the opposite ones.

Book an air quality visit

How the process works

1. Measure before anything is sold. Humidity, particle levels, carbon dioxide as a proxy for ventilation, duct leakage and a look at the coil and drain. Gainesville customers tend to want the numbers, and we give them.
2. Fix the HVAC causes first. Oversized equipment, leaking returns, a dirty coil, a wrong fan setting. Many air quality problems here are mechanical problems wearing a different name.
3. Add equipment only where the numbers justify it. Media filter cabinets and higher-rated filters for pollen; whole-house dehumidifiers for summer humidity; UV lamps for coil biofilm; ventilation for tight new homes; duct sealing or cleaning where the ducts are the source. Lennox Healthy Climate products are what we install; we service other brands.
4. Re-measure. After the work, the same readings, so you can see what changed.

What is guaranteed

Cook’s stands behind air quality work with its satisfaction guarantee, workmanship coverage on the installation and the manufacturer’s warranty on each product. If a dehumidifier or filtration system we recommended does not move the numbers we said it would, we come back. Service is available at any hour at the same price, and every visit ends with the readings in writing. GRU customers can also request an Energy and Water Survey from the utility, which touches on humidity and duct leakage; it complements our visit rather than replacing it.