Built around Savannah's seasons
Savannah's comfort calendar has four parts: a warm spring that turns humid quickly, a long sticky summer, a hurricane season that overlaps it, and a short winter with cold mornings. NOAA's engineering weather data for the Savannah station, 49 feet above sea level, supplies the numbers behind each step below.
Spring: set the system up for the long haul
- Book the cooling tune-up in March or April, before the first heat wave fills every technician's calendar.
- Ask for readings on paper: refrigerant pressures, superheat or subcooling, temperature split and static pressure. These give you a baseline.
- Change the filter and buy a few months' worth. Oak and pine pollen loads them fast.
- Look under the house if your ducts or air handler sit in a crawlspace. Note standing water, torn duct wrap or disconnected runs and ask the technician to look too.
Summer: control the moisture
NOAA counts about 1,902 hours a year at Savannah with the wet-bulb temperature above 73°F, and the 1% summer design temperature is 93°F with a mean coincident wet-bulb of 77°F.
- Keep indoor humidity in check. A small hygrometer tells you whether the system is drying the air. Persistent readings in the high range point to sizing, fan settings or duct leaks.
- Pour water down the condensate line access monthly to confirm it drains freely, and ask your technician whether a cleaning treatment is wise.
- Keep the thermostat steady. Large swings make the system run long, hard cycles that are tough on humidity control.
Hurricane season: June through November
NOAA lists a 50-year basic wind speed of 110 mph and a 100-year rainfall rate of 4.3 inches per hour at Savannah. During Hurricane Matthew in 2016, the tide gauge at Fort Pulaski recorded a peak water level of 5.05 feet above mean higher high water, a record for the site.
- Know your elevation. If the outdoor unit or an air handler under the house sits low, ask whether raising it is practical.
- Shut the system off at the disconnect before a storm and leave it off until power is stable.
- After flooding, have any unit that was in water inspected before it runs. Salt water is especially hard on electrical parts and coils.
- Photograph the equipment and its model plates now, so an insurance claim has a before picture.
Fall: switch to heat
- Test the heat on the first cool evening rather than the first cold night.
- Clean or replace the filter again after the long cooling season.
Winter: the cold mornings
Savannah's 99% winter design temperature is 30°F, and NOAA counts about 17 freeze-thaw cycles a year.
- Watch for frost on the heat pump coil. A defrost cycle is normal; a coil that stays iced up is not.
- Know when backup heat runs and ask your technician how to tell from the thermostat.
- Insulate exposed condensate and refrigerant lines that run outside.
Keep the paperwork
Keep the install date, model numbers, warranty registration and every service ticket in one folder. It makes repair decisions easier and speeds up any claim after a storm.