AC Installation in St. Petersburg, FL
A new air conditioner in St. Petersburg will run from March through December every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Pinellas County will get in touch.
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Ten months of cooling a year in St. Petersburg
Your air conditioner runs from March through December here, with summer afternoons averaging 90°F. That leaves only a couple of months when the system gets any real rest. The compressor cycles on and off for most of the year, not just a few summer weeks.
A new system installed here needs to be sized and installed to handle that kind of run time. Any new central air conditioner has to meet a federal efficiency minimum of 14.3 SEER2, so whatever goes in will start from that baseline. Pinellas County has also seen 60 damaging wind events over the past ten years, which is worth keeping in mind for how the outdoor unit gets installed and secured.
- 10 months
- March through December, your air conditioner is on duty
- 90°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
- 5 hail events
- in ten years, and hail bends the fins on outdoor coils
- 13.4 SEER2
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A higher-efficiency unit would save about $30 a year to run in Pinellas County compared with a new unit at the federal minimum.
Estimates for a typical Pinellas County home, from EIA household energy data, Florida fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Florida requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
This license comes from the Construction Industry Licensing Board. It covers the contractor, not the job, so the board tested and keeps a record of the person or company holding it, and that record stands no matter whose house they're working in.
The license tells you the contractor was tested and is on file with the state. It doesn't cover the installation itself. In most cities and counties, putting in a new air conditioner needs a permit from the local building office, and an inspection once the work is done. That inspection is what checks the unit itself, the refrigerant lines, the electrical work, the way it sits on its pad. The license and the permit cover two different things, and this job calls for both.
Sources: Florida Legislature · Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation
- What size air conditioner does my house need?
- The right size comes from a load calculation, not the square footage of the house alone. A contractor measures your windows, insulation, ceiling height, and how much sun the walls take on through the day. Homes here need cooling from March through December, so an oversized unit will cycle on and off without pulling the humidity down, and a unit that is too small will run constantly on those 90°F afternoons and still not keep up. Ask for the load calculation in writing before you agree to a size.
- Should I replace the whole system or just the outdoor unit?
- In most cases you replace the outdoor unit and the indoor coil together. They are matched to work at a specific capacity, and pairing a new outdoor unit with an old coil usually means you lose the efficiency you paid for, and it can void the warranty. The exception is when the coil is still new enough to match the new unit's specs, which a contractor can check. A new central air conditioner installed now also has to meet the federal minimum of 14.3 SEER2, so replacing only the outdoor unit can make that standard hard to hit.
- Do HVAC contractors in St. Petersburg need a state license to work on my home?
- Yes. Florida requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license, issued by the Construction Industry Licensing Board. Ask to see the license number before work starts, and you can look it up with the board directly if you want to confirm it is current.