A hot-dust smell on the second floor of a brick block downtown, and what it was

The smell in the ceiling

The second-floor apartment was in a brick commercial block from the early 1900s, a storefront downstairs and living space above, within sight of the courthouse. Every time the heat cycled on, a hot, dusty, faintly electrical smell filled the front rooms. The tenant assumed the furnace was failing. The furnace was fine.

What we found above the ceiling was a 1970s electric air handler with heat strips, installed when the building was converted, with the original duct still in place: fiberboard, unlined, sagging, and coated inside with half a century of downtown dust. The strips cooked that dust at every start. The fix was a new air handler, new duct in the short runs that mattered, and a cleaning of the rest. The smell left with the old duct.

That job is downtown Lake City in miniature: old buildings, equipment added in layers, and a problem that is rarely where the tenant thinks it is.

Three kinds of building around the lake

The historic core of Lake City wraps around Lake DeSoto and the courthouse square. Its buildings fall into three groups.

The brick blocks. Early-1900s commercial buildings, the Hotel Blanche and the 1912 bank among them, with flat roofs that carry package units or split-system condensers, storefronts on the street and offices or apartments above. Heavy masonry holds heat into the evening and cools slowly.

The frame houses. Late-1800s to 1940s wood houses on the streets around the lake and north toward the old neighborhoods: pier foundations, tall ceilings, little or no attic, and central systems that were squeezed in during the 1960s through the 1990s. Many have gas furnaces.

The rentals. The city’s housing is about 60 percent renter-occupied, and downtown is where a lot of those units sit: converted upstairs spaces, duplexed houses and small apartment buildings with equipment nobody has looked at in years.

Gas at the curb

Lake City Utilities runs a natural gas system under the downtown streets, which makes this the one part of our Columbia County route where a gas furnace is a routine find rather than a curiosity. Furnace repair, furnace maintenance and furnace replacement are real services downtown. So is the decision at replacement time: pair a new air conditioner with a new gas furnace, or move to a heat pump and give up the gas. On a January morning in the 20s, gas heat is comfortable and cheap; across the whole year, a heat pump may cost less to run. We work the numbers for the specific house rather than pushing one answer.

The commercial side of the square

The courthouse, county offices, law and professional offices, restaurants, shops and the medical and college buildings a little farther out keep a commercial technician busy downtown. Rooftop package units on brick blocks, split systems in offices, walk-in and kitchen ventilation at the restaurants, and the service contracts that carry them through August all come out of the same Cook’s dispatch as the residential work. A rooftop failure on a Friday in July is the call we would rather prevent with a spring contract visit.

What downtown asks for most

• Ductless systems for upper floors and frame houses that cannot take duct.
• Furnace service and gas-versus-heat-pump replacement quotes.
• Duct replacement and cleaning in buildings with original fiberboard runs.
• Rooftop unit maintenance and replacement on the commercial blocks.
• Maintenance agreements written for landlords with several addresses.

From Fairmont Lane to the courthouse square

Downtown Lake City is about 121 miles, two hours and twenty-five minutes, from the Flagler County street where Cook’s parks its trucks. Cook’s is a family company that installs Lennox and repairs every brand it finds, which downtown means everything from a rooftop unit older than the technician to a mini-split installed last spring. Someone picks up the phone whenever it rings, and a 2 a.m. call on the square is priced like a 2 p.m. call.