The cheapest part of a Davis Shores air conditioner is the stand it sits on

The cost argument, without numbers

Picture two expenses. One is a condenser: the outdoor half of the system, the most expensive single component in the house’s mechanical equipment, worth many months of a household budget. The other is a stand: an engineered aluminum frame or a pair of wall brackets, a fraction of the first figure, installed in a few hours. In a neighborhood that floods on the tide chart, the first expense recurs and the second prevents the recurrence. There is no honest version of the math in which the stand loses.

Davis Shores homeowners know this. The neighborhood was dredged out of the marsh in 1925 and sits a few feet above the Matanzas on a good day, inside the FEMA one-percent flood zone. It flooded badly in Matthew and Irma, took surge again in Ian, Nicole and Milton, and sees water in the low streets a dozen or more times a year on ordinary king tides. A condenser on a grade-level pad here is a condenser that will stand in salt water. The only question is when.

Choosing the height

There are three reference points, and we use all of them.

The regulatory minimum. Mechanical equipment in a special flood hazard area is generally expected to sit at or above the base flood elevation for the lot, and the county permit review applies that to your address. It is a floor, not a target.

The storm marks. Most Davis Shores houses carry a record of 2016 and 2017 somewhere: a stain on a garage wall, a pencil line a previous owner drew, a neighbor’s memory of water at the second step. Matthew’s flood level downtown was around seven feet and Irma’s around six; what matters is where that landed on your lot. We measure from the marks.

The margin. Tides are rising and the next storm is not obliged to match the last one. We add to the higher mark rather than meet it.

The result, for most of the neighborhood, is a stand somewhere between knee and waist height. On the lowest canal streets it is a wall bracket at a height that looks excessive until the next October.

Stand types, and which fits

Engineered aluminum stands. The default. A welded or bolted frame, powder-coated, in standard heights, anchored to a poured pad or the existing slab. Adjustable models let us set the exact height to the mark. Aluminum does not rust in the salt air coming off the inlet, which steel does.

Wall brackets. Two heavy arms bolted into the block wall of the house, carrying the unit with nothing below it. The right choice when the lot is small, the required height is tall, or the yard floods so routinely that a stand’s footing would sit in water. The wall has to be sound block, and the brackets have to be rated for the unit’s weight and the wind.

Block or concrete platforms. A built-up masonry pedestal. Durable, but heavy, slow to build, and hard to set to an exact height. We use them where an owner wants something that matches a hardscape, and rarely otherwise.

Deck or roof platforms. For houses already elevated or with a flat roof section. Possible, but the unit’s weight and the service access have to be worked out with whoever built the structure.

Get a stand quoted

The details that come with lifting a unit

A stand is not just a stand. Raising a condenser by two or three feet changes four other things, and skipping any of them undoes the point.

The line set. The refrigerant lines have to be extended or re-formed to reach the new height, brazed, pressure-tested and insulated. On a new install this is simply part of the job. On a lift of an existing unit it means recovering and re-charging the refrigerant.

The electrical. The disconnect on the wall and the whip to the unit must come up with it. A disconnect left at the old height is the thing that floods now. We mount it above the unit’s new base.

The straps. Wind-load strapping to the stand, and the stand to the slab or wall, with stainless hardware. The salt air here eats galvanized fasteners in a few seasons.

The drain and the pad. Rain and condensate off a raised unit fall farther. We make sure they fall onto something that drains, not against the foundation or onto a walkway that will grow slick.

The air handler, too

Half the system is indoors, and in many Davis Shores houses it is in the garage, on the slab, below the same water line. A platform for the air handler, with the return duct re-worked and the drain re-routed, is the indoor half of this conversation. An attic air handler avoids the problem entirely; a garage unit on a platform above the marks is the practical compromise for a house that already has one there.

When to do it

At replacement, always. A new outdoor unit in Davis Shores goes on a stand as a matter of course, with a coated coil for the salt and a quote that shows the stand as its own line. For an existing unit under about ten years old that has never been flooded, a lift on its own is worth doing before the fall tides. For an older unit, or one that has already stood in salt water once, the stand goes under its replacement, and the sooner the better.