Pomona Park and Lake Como: the July bill nobody expected

What the bill is saying

Pomona Park and Lake Como homeowners pay either FPL or Clay Electric, depending on where the line falls, and in July both bills climb. The question is how much. A system in good condition produces a bill that tracks the weather: a hotter July costs more than a mild one, but not dramatically more. A bill that jumps by a third or half with no change in the household is almost always one of these:

• Low refrigerant. The system cools, slowly, running twenty hours a day to hold 76.
• A dirty outdoor coil. Pollen, grass clippings and lake-shore dust insulate the fins; the compressor works harder for the same result.
• A weak capacitor. The compressor strains to start every cycle and draws more current while it runs.
• Duct leaks under a manufactured home. Cooled air pours into the crawlspace and the unit runs to replace it.
• A fan set to ON. The blower runs all month, which costs more than most people assume and raises indoor humidity.

We confirm which one with a clamp meter on the compressor, pressures on the refrigerant side, and a look at the duct. The bill is the symptom; the meter reading is the diagnosis.

Two towns on the highway

Pomona Park is a town of just under eight hundred people on US 17, between Satsuma to the north and Crescent City to the south, and its welcome sign says “On Beautiful Lake Broward.” The town grew up with the citrus industry in the late 1800s, and a handful of the frame houses from that era survive among block homes from the 1950s through the 1980s, lakefront ranches along Lake Broward’s shore, and manufactured homes on the sandy lots away from the water.

Lake Como is the smaller unincorporated community a few miles south on the same highway, named for its own lake. The housing is similar: lake cottages, mid-century block houses, manufactured homes, and acreage with a mix of both. Water is from private wells across both communities; propane serves the gas appliances.

Lakefront equipment

Houses on Lake Broward and Lake Como face the water with screened porches and big windows, and they take in moisture the way lake houses do. Their systems run longer, their drain lines foul faster, and their outdoor units collect the fine dust that blows off the shore. None of that is a defect; it is the setting. It does mean a spring coil rinse, a drain treatment and a humidity check matter more here than a few streets back from the water.

The citrus-era houses

The frame homes that date from the town’s orange-growing days were built for cross-ventilation: tall windows, deep porches, a central hall. Air conditioning, where it exists, was added piecemeal with window units and perhaps one mini-split, and heat often still comes from a gas wall furnace. These houses are strong candidates for a ductless system that heats and cools several rooms from one outdoor unit without ductwork.

Manufactured homes and package units

A large share of the year-round housing in both towns is manufactured, and that means package units on pads beside the house pushing air through a duct under the floor. The duct is the usual culprit when the bill climbs: a split seam or a disconnected run dumps cold air into the crawlspace, and the unit runs all day trying to make it up. We inspect under the floor on every maintenance visit here.

From Palm Coast to Lake Broward

Cook’s is headquartered at 37 Fairmont Ln in Palm Coast. Pomona Park is a little over an hour away by SR 100 and US 17; Lake Como is a few minutes beyond it. We run the US 17 corridor regularly and group calls along it, we carry the parts for every brand we see here, and the phone is answered around the clock without an after-hours fee.