Hurricane Preparation for Your Air Conditioner in Metairie

Everyone in Jefferson Parish has a hurricane routine. The generator gets tested, the shutters come out, the tubs get filled. The air conditioning is almost never on that list, right up until the moment it becomes the most expensive thing in the house to have got wrong.

This is the whole sequence, in order, with the one rule that matters more than all the rest put together.

Before the Season: Do This in May

Season runs from the first of June to the end of November. The work below takes twenty minutes and it is worth almost nothing if you do it after a storm is named.

Photograph the outdoor unit, including the data plate

The data plate is the metal sticker on the side of the condenser carrying the model number, the serial number and the manufacture date. Every insurance claim asks for those three things, and they become unreadable the moment a cabinet is damaged or submerged.

Take clear photographs of the plate, the whole unit from two angles, and the indoor air handler. Then get them off the phone — email them to yourself, put them in cloud storage, whatever survives a dead battery and a week without power.

Find the electrical disconnect and make sure it works

The disconnect is a grey box mounted on the wall near the outdoor unit, usually with a pull-out handle. You may need it in a hurry and in poor light, so find it now rather than during the evacuation.

Pull it, check the system stops, put it back. If it is seized, painted over or missing its cover, that is a small job now and a problem later.

Clear the ground around the condenser

Anything within a few feet that can become a projectile. Garden furniture, planters, loose fence panels, the bag of gravel that has been there since the spring. A condenser coil is aluminium fin; it does not survive being hit by much.

Know how high the unit sits

Measure from ground level to the bottom of the cabinet. If your street took water in a previous event, compare the two numbers now while there is time to do something about it. Raising a condenser onto a taller stand is routine work in this parish and it is far cheaper than replacing one.

When a Storm Is Named

Seventy-two hours out is the last comfortable moment to get anyone out to look at anything. Once a watch is issued, every HVAC company in the parish is either booked or shut.

• Run the system hard and pay attention. If it is going to fail, better it fails now. Strange noises, weak airflow or water in the drain pan are all things you would rather find on Tuesday than on Saturday.
• Change the filter. You may be running the system on generator power later, and restricted airflow makes that harder on the equipment.
• Clear the condensate drain. A blocked line during a week when nobody is checking the ceiling is how a small fault becomes a large repair. The mechanism is on the AC repair page.
• Cool the house down early. A house pre-cooled to sixty-eight degrees stays liveable for many hours after the power goes. Thermal mass is free.

The Night Before: Shut It Down Properly

This is the step almost nobody takes, and it is the one that prevents the expensive failure.

Turn the system off at the thermostat, then off at the breaker, before the power goes out. Both. Not one.

Two reasons. Grid power in a storm does not fail cleanly — it browns out, surges and cycles, and a compressor being asked to start on unstable voltage is a compressor being damaged. And more importantly, a system left switched on will try to start itself the instant power returns, whether or not it has been under water in the meantime. Nobody is standing there to stop it.

If you are evacuating, do this as you leave. It takes thirty seconds.

After the Storm: the One Rule

If the outdoor unit has been under water, do not switch it on to see whether it works.

That sentence is the reason this article exists.

Flood water leaves silt, salt and moisture inside the compressor windings, the contactor and the control board. A unit in that state is an insurance loss — documented, claimable, and somebody else’s problem. Energise it, and the windings short, the compressor is destroyed, and the cause is now something you did rather than something the storm did. Insurers are not sympathetic about that distinction.

The urge to test it is completely understandable. Resist it. Leave the breaker off, photograph everything, and have it inspected before it is energised.

How to tell whether it went under

A waterline of silt or debris on the cabinet is the obvious sign. Look also at the level of grass and mud pressed against the base, and inside the cabinet through the fan grille for a mud line on the coil. If you cannot tell, assume it did.

When the Power Comes Back

Assuming no flooding, restart in this order rather than all at once.

• Wait. Give the grid an hour to stabilise. Restoration is rarely clean and the first hour often includes further cycling.
• Breaker on, thermostat still off. Let the compressor’s crankcase heater do its job before anything is asked to run.
• Look at the outdoor unit before calling for cooling. Debris in the fan, a bent fan blade, anything leaning against the coil.
• Thermostat to cool, set a few degrees below room temperature. Not fifteen degrees below — that just guarantees a long first run on equipment you have not verified.
• Listen to the first two minutes. Grinding, screeching or a hum that does not become a start means switch it off again.

Expect the house to take a long time to recover. After several days without cooling, the building itself is saturated with heat and moisture, and pulling that back out takes many hours. That is normal and it is not a fault.

Ductwork and Insulation That Took Water

Less dramatic than a drowned condenser and frequently more consequential in the long run.

Flexible duct that has been submerged cannot be reliably cleaned. The inner liner and the insulation between it and the outer jacket hold water and contamination, and no amount of spraying changes that. It gets replaced.

The deadline matters more than the thoroughness. Mould establishes in wet building materials within roughly a day or two, so how fast the house dries decides far more than what gets cleaned afterwards. And do not run the system to help dry things out if the ductwork was under water — that circulates contamination through every room in the house.

What to do about the humidity and air quality afterwards is on the indoor air quality page.

Generators: Two Things Worth Saying

Carbon monoxide from portable generators kills more people in this region after storms than the storms themselves do. Never run one indoors, in a garage, in a carport, or under an open window — not even with the door open. Well away from the house, exhaust pointing away, and a working CO alarm inside.

Second: most portable generators will not run central air conditioning. The starting surge on a compressor is several times its running draw, and a unit that comfortably powers a fridge and some lights will stall trying to start a condenser. What is actually required, and what it costs, is covered in the guide to whole-home generators in Metairie.

What to Have Ready for the Insurer

• Photographs of the unit before the storm, including the data plate.
• Photographs after, showing the waterline or the damage, before anything is moved or cleaned.
• The original installation invoice if you have it, or at least the install date.
• Any maintenance records — these matter more than people expect, because a well-maintained system that failed in a storm is a very different claim from one that had already stopped working.
• A written diagnosis from whoever inspects it, stating the cause.

Do not throw the old unit away before the claim is settled, however wrecked it looks. Adjusters ask to see it.

The Short Version

• May: photograph the data plate, find the disconnect, clear the surroundings.
• Storm named: run it hard, change the filter, clear the drain, pre-cool the house.
• Night before: off at the thermostat and off at the breaker.
• After: if it went under water, do not energise it. Photograph, then have it inspected.
• Power back: wait an hour, breaker first, thermostat second, listen to the first two minutes.

Bonnabel Air covers Metairie, Kenner and east Jefferson Parish. If something is wrong after a storm, emergency AC repair answers after hours — and if the honest answer is that it can wait until the morning at a normal rate, we will tell you that instead.