HVAC: What Happens When Your Heating or Cooling Goes Out

In Florida, air conditioning is not a comfort item. It is the system your residents notice within hours, and the one that generates the most maintenance calls in the summer time.  Heat matters less often here, but record breaking cold temperatures over many days 2026 showed it still matters.

This page explains exactly what we do when your HVAC fails and why we handle it the way we do. Most of it concerns cooling, because most of it is cooling. Heating is covered at the end.

What we commit to

We commit to a speedy response to get a technician out to the home and make a best effort to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.  Most of the time, this means if a issue is reported prior to noon, we can get someone out the same day.  If report after noon, often it will be the same day but possibly not.  We cannot commit to any specific time to repair because we don’t control the vendor schedules, the time of day or day of wee that the issue is reported, or part(s) availability.  Parts warehouses are not available on the weekend.  AC techs can still resolve many common issues on a weekend, therefore it is worth it to try.

While we do treat HVAC issues as a “emergency” in the heat of the summer, it is not an emergency in the sense that a busted pipe is.  HVAC vendors do not work 24/7.  During the busy season, we do use vendors that have 7 day service.

Same-day is not ours to promise. Compressors, blower motors, and control boards are not stocked items. Parts go on back order. And in July, August and September, HVAC vendors in Pasco and Hillsborough are are booked deep.

Here is what we do commit to, every time:

• The resident’s work order reaches a HVAC vendor within hours. If during our business hours, most of the time, it will be less than 1 hour.
• For evenings and weekends, a HVAC work order is processed through our notification system as a emergency so that there is no delay in scheduling, even if that is for the next day.
• We take the earliest appointment available, not the most convenient one.
• We keep you and your resident current on where the repair stands, including when the news is a back-ordered part and a wait.

The 24-hour standard

That happens automatically. Your resident does not have to ask. We do not hold it while we try to reach you for approval.

We move that fast on purpose. A home with no cooling in a Florida summer raises a habitability question, and every day of delay makes your position worse rather than better. Acting quickly here is protection for you and the residents appreciate.  If we don’t provide it, most will ask for it and then we missed the opportunity to be proactive and build trust with the tenant.

One unit is the standard, and it is the same on every property we manage. It does not scale with the square footage of the home or the number of people living in it.

If you want a second unit placed

If an outage runs long, or the home is large enough that one unit is not keeping up, your property manager will call you with the option. A second unit goes out only with your approval, and only when one is available.

What it costs you

Rates below are current as of August 2026. The Schedule of Fees in your Owners Handbook is the authority, and these are estimates against it.

Our equipment or a rental, and who decides

We decide.

Cooling gets to the home either from our own equipment fleet or from a commercial rental supplier. That call is ours to make, and it comes down to what we have available at the time, and whether we are available to get a unit to the home.

We use our own equipment first whenever we can. It is normally the better value for you. When it is already placed at other properties, down for service, or simply cannot reach the home fast enough, we rent rather than leave your resident waiting. Waiting is the more expensive option.

Either way, the portable unit is billed to you at the estimated Equipment Rental rate in our Schedule of Fees, which covers delivery, setup and removal.

Why interim cooling is the cheaper outcome

It usually is not close.  A portable unit for a week is a modest line on one statement. A resident left with no cooling and no plan is a different kind of expense:

• Rent credits or abatement. Far easier to negotiate down when there is a unit in the living room.
• A lease terminated early. A resident with a documented habitability complaint has real leverage.
• A vacancy and a full turnover. Our response to work-order and especially HVAC issues will likely be part of the tenants decision tree when deciding to renew. Vacancy and turn-over cost much more than a portable air conditioning.

There is a quieter return too. Residents who feel looked after during a bad week renew. Residents who spent four days in a 90-degree house do not, and they tell you about it in the review. Retention is worth considerably more to you than the rental line costs.

What actually slows a repair down

When we tell you it will be a few days, it is almost always one of these.

Parts availability. Blower motors, compressors, control boards, and coils are ordered, not stocked. A back order is a back order, and no amount of vendor pressure moves it.

Season. June through September, vendor calendars in Pasco and Hillsborough are full. The same repair that takes a day in February may take a few days in August.

The age of the unit. Older systems may take longer, because parts are harder to source and because the diagnosis is rarely a single failure.

A home warranty on the property. If your property carries a home warranty, the warranty company controls the repair, not us. They select the vendor, they set the timeline, and they decide whether a system gets repaired or replaced.  The 24-hour cooling standard on this page still applies, and the portable unit still gets placed.  We reserve the right to intervein if the warranty vendor does not have a reasonable response, resolution or is having difficulty getting approval.

What makes a failure less likely

Some of the urgent calls we take were preventable, and the prevention is cheap.

Maintenance Plan. Two maintenance visit a year catches a failing capacitor or a clogged drain line before it becomes a July no-cool call especially when all the intangibles are considered.

Filters. A blocked filter is the most common cause of a frozen coil, and a frozen coil looks exactly like a dead system to the resident. We provide filters for most our residents through the Resident Benefits package and send reminders to change them.  We also check filters when we do home evaluations.

Knowing the age of your unit. If your system is near the end of its service life, the question is not whether it fails but when, and whether it does so on your schedule or on the hottest weekend of the year. We would rather have the replacement conversation with you in March than the emergency conversation in August.

When repair stops making sense

At some point another repair is money spent on a system that will fail again next season. The conversation is worth having when you see:

• Repeated failures in the same season
• A system old enough that parts are becoming difficult to source
• A repair quote that is a meaningful fraction of a replacement
• A system still running R-22 refrigerant, which has not been produced in the United States since 2020 and has become expensive to obtain

We will bring you the numbers when we see the pattern. The decision is always yours.

Heating

Florida winters are mild most years. 2026 was not, and a home without heat during a hard cold snap raises legally is a more serious habitability issue than cooling does although most tenants will have a opposite evaluation. We treat a heat loss with the same urgency at the front end: a vendor out quickly, and updates to you and your resident while it runs.

Where an outage runs long, or the forecast justifies it, we may place a portable heater for the tenants comfort.

Questions we get

Is a broken AC an emergency?

Technically no, but practically it is the highest urgency behind a flood, broken pipe, sewer backup, etc.  It is urgent, and we treat it that way. It is not a promise of same-day repair. The distinction matters, because a same-day guarantee is not in our control.

Can my resident withhold rent because the AC is out?

Florida law gives residents remedies when a property is not habitable. The fastest way to keep that from becoming your problem is exactly what this page describes: a vendor same day, a portable unit past 24 hours, and documented communication throughout.

My resident is asking for a second unit. What happens?

Your property manager brings the request to you. A second unit goes out with your approval and when one is available, at the same rate as the first.

Can I decline the portable unit to save the rental cost?

We do not recommend it and we will tell you so plainly. The cost of the unit is small next to what a habitability claim, a lease break, or a turnover costs. If you still want to decline, that is a conversation to have with your property manager directly.

Who pays if the resident broke it?

If the failure is caused by resident damage or neglect rather than normal wear, the cost is charged to the resident under the lease. We document the vendor’s findings either way.

My property has a home warranty. Does this still apply?

Yes. We place the portable unit on the same 24-hour standard. The repair itself runs on the warranty company’s timeline, which is usually slower than ours.

Equipment rental rates are published in our Schedule of Fees and are current as of August 2026. This page is general information for property owners. It is not legal advice.