Hurricane Prep — Appliance Checklist for South Florida (2026)

If you have lived through more than one Florida hurricane season, you already know the drill: stock the pantry, fuel the generator, plywood the windows. What most homeowners do not have a routine for is their appliances. And that is where the post-storm repair bills come from. Almost every June through November we run a wave of service calls in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach where the actual damage was preventable with about forty-five minutes of pre-storm prep.

This is the checklist we give our own friends and family. It is written from the inside of a service truck, not from a FEMA brochure. The steps assume a serious tropical storm or Category 1 to 2 threat. For Category 3 and up, you are evacuating anyway, so the last section on what to do when you come back matters more.

Why Appliances Fail After Storms, Not During

The single biggest misconception we hear is that hurricane appliance damage happens during the storm. It does not, mostly. The wind and rain rarely reach a properly sealed kitchen. What actually kills your appliances is the chain reaction that follows: extended power outages, voltage spikes when the grid is restored, floodwater that seeps under cabinets and into motor housings, salt spray pushed inland on storm gusts, and weeks of running on a generator that produces dirty power.

The compressor in a Sub-Zero 648PRO or a Samsung RF28R7351 is not engineered to be hit with a 240-volt surge spike when FPL bounces the line trying to re-energize a substation. The control board on a Bosch 800-series dishwasher is not designed to sit in three quarters of an inch of standing brackish water for forty-eight hours. The motor windings on a Whirlpool top-load washer do not recover gracefully from corrosion that started the week of the storm and only manifests symptomatically three weeks later.

Almost everything below is about controlling those secondary failures.

Pre-Storm Checklist — 24 to 48 Hours Before Landfall

Start this when the cone of uncertainty shifts inside the South Florida peninsula. Do not wait for the watch to become a warning. By then the home-improvement stores are out of surge protectors and you should be filling the bathtub, not crawling behind the fridge.

1. Pre-Freeze Water Bottles in the Freezer

This single step gives you the biggest practical benefit and costs nothing. Fill clean plastic bottles three-quarters full with tap water and lay them flat in any empty freezer space. The frozen mass holds cold for hours after the power goes. A full freezer keeps food safe for roughly 48 hours after an outage. A half-full freezer drops to 24. The bottles take you from half-full to full without spending a dollar. When the power comes back you also have drinkable water if the city goes on a boil order.

2. Drop the Refrigerator Set Point

Twenty-four hours before the storm hits, set your fridge to its coldest setting and the freezer to its lowest temperature. You are storing thermal mass. Same logic as the bottles, except instead of paying nothing you are paying a couple of dollars in extra electricity. The food rides out the outage longer.

3. Unplug Everything Non-Essential When the Storm Closes In

About four hours before landfall, walk the house and unplug:

• Microwave (its control board is the second most common surge casualty we see, right behind refrigerator main boards)
• Toaster oven, coffee maker, stand mixer, instant pot, air fryer
• All televisions and their soundbars
• Computer towers, modems, routers, smart-home hubs
• Washer and dryer (yes, even though you are not using them — the control boards still draw standby current)
• Wine cooler and beverage center (if the contents are not critical, save the compressor)
• Garbage disposal

Leave plugged in: the main refrigerator, the freezer, anything medical, and the sump or condensate pumps if you have them. The fridge stays plugged in because you want it running cold for as long as possible before the outage starts.

4. Raise Appliances Off the Floor in Flood-Prone Rooms

If you live below the third floor in a flood zone — much of east Hollywood, Hallandale Beach, parts of Aventura, west-side Davie, Sweetwater — get your laundry room appliances onto cinder blocks. Two inches of clearance is not enough. Four to six inches buys you survival from a normal storm surge in a low-lying neighborhood. The motors live in the bottom of every washer and most dryers. Once that motor gets submerged in brackish or dirty water, you are looking at a $400 to $700 replacement on a $900 appliance.

5. Clean Out the Refrigerator Drain Line

Most fridges have a small drain channel that runs from the freezer evaporator down to a pan above the compressor. After a long outage where the freezer fully defrosts, that channel needs to be clear. Pull the bottom freezer drawer, find the drain hole at the back, and clear it with a turkey baster of warm water and a small amount of bleach. This is a five-minute task that prevents the puddle-under-the-fridge you will otherwise wake up to once power comes back.

6. Check Your Surge Protection

The whole-house surge protector at your panel — if you have one — has a sacrificial element that wears out. A green LED should be lit. If you cannot find that LED or the unit is older than five years, it is probably not protecting you anymore. Add plug-in surge strips at the refrigerator, kitchen appliances on the counter, washer, dryer, and any wall-mounted TVs. Look for a Joule rating of at least 2,000 and “EMI/RFI filtering” on the spec sheet. Tripp Lite TLP1208SAT, APC Performance series, and Furman PST-8 are all worth what you pay for them. The $9.99 power strip at the grocery store is not.

7. Photograph Everything

Walk every room with your phone. Take wide shots and close-ups of every major appliance. Get the model and serial tags in the frame — they are usually on the side of the door for refrigerators, on the back of the lid for washers, inside the door frame for ranges. Save the photos to cloud storage, not just your phone. If you end up filing an insurance claim later, this evidence is what gets ACV claims paid quickly versus dragging on for months.

Storm-Mode Considerations — When the Power Is Out

Keep the Refrigerator and Freezer Doors Closed

This is the single most important rule and the one most consistently broken. Every door opening costs you cooling reserve. A closed full freezer rides 48 hours. The same freezer opened five times a day rides about 18. If you absolutely must open the fridge, decide what you are grabbing before you open the door. Treat it like a NASA EVA.

If You Are on a Generator

Two things matter: power quality and load.

Power quality first. A cheap open-frame contractor generator outputs a square-ish waveform with significant harmonics. Your inverter generator (Honda EU2200i, Generac iQ3500, Predator 3500 inverter) outputs a clean sine wave. Modern refrigerators with inverter compressors — most LG, Samsung, recent Sub-Zero, Miele — are sensitive to dirty power and can damage their inverter board running on the cheap contractor generator. If you have a contractor unit, run the older simpler appliances first and the inverter-compressor models last.

Load second. Do not put the AC and the refrigerator and the well pump on the same 30-amp circuit. Calculate before the storm. A 4,000-watt generator running an inverter refrigerator (700W startup, 200W run), a chest freezer (400W startup, 100W run), and a window AC (1,200W) is at its safe maximum. Add a microwave and you trip.

Smell Check the Fridge Before You Open It Wide

If you have been out for more than 24 hours with the freezer half-full, crack the door an inch and smell. A sour smell or a smell like spoiled meat means the seal has been broken thermally and you should toss everything before you let the smell into your kitchen. We have seen people lose hundreds of dollars in food trying to salvage what was already gone.

Post-Storm Checklist — Before You Plug Anything Back In

This is the section that prevents the most service calls. When the power flickers back on, the urge is to rush around and verify everything works. Resist that urge. The grid stabilizes over hours, not seconds. The first restoration cycle is when the worst spikes happen.

1. Wait Thirty Minutes After Power Returns

Let FPL do its switching. Leave breakers off if you remembered to flip them. If you did not, leave plugs out. After thirty minutes the grid voltage typically stabilizes. Then start plugging things back in one at a time, biggest first.

2. Inspect Every Major Appliance Visually Before Plugging

Look at the base of each unit for a water line — the brown or muddy stripe that says water reached that height. On a washer, a water line above the bottom inch means the motor was submerged. On a refrigerator, a water line on the compressor housing in the back means the same. On a dryer, the motor sits right above the heating element. Any water line that crosses motor or board level means do not plug it in.

If you see no water lines and the cord and plug look normal, you are probably clear of the worst.

3. Smell Test for Burned Windings

Get your nose within an inch of the back vent of any motorized appliance — washer, dryer, dishwasher, fridge compressor area. A sharp electrical smell, like burned plastic mixed with hair, is a winding short. That appliance is done. Plugging it in will trip a breaker at best and start a fire at worst.

4. Slow Start-Up Procedure

For refrigerators specifically, after a long outage:

• Plug in but do not load. Let the compressor run empty for 60 minutes
• Listen for the compressor to engage (a low hum and slight vibration)
• Check that the evaporator fan is moving air through the back wall vents
• After an hour, the freezer should be measurably cold to the touch
• Only then start putting food back in, room temperature only

If you load a warm refrigerator with everything from the cooler at once, you are asking the compressor to do its hardest work on its weakest startup. After a hurricane, many compressors are already marginal. This is what tips them into failure two to four weeks later — a delayed mortality we see every September and October.

5. Watch for Delayed Failures

The hidden cost of hurricane season is the failures that show up weeks after the storm. Patterns we see:

• Refrigerator works fine for ten days, then ice maker stops, then fridge section warms — surge-damaged control board, classic progression
• Washer runs for three loads, then throws an unbalanced error every time — damp control board corrosion, accelerated by humid Florida air
• Dishwasher leaks at the door — gasket got displaced by floodwater that pushed up under the cabinet
• Ice machine works but ice tastes off — water line corrosion or contamination from utility-water issues during the outage

If something starts behaving differently three weeks after the storm and you cannot explain it, the storm is probably the cause. File the insurance claim sooner rather than later — most homeowner policies require claims within sixty days of the named storm.

Cat 3+ Considerations — Returning Home After Evacuation

If you evacuated for a major storm, the rules change. You are coming home to a house that may have been without power for a week, may have lost roof integrity, may have taken on water you did not see while you were gone.

Do not plug anything in until you have walked the property dry. Look for water staining on the wall behind appliances — that is the only way to know how high the water got. Pull the bottom kick plate on the dishwasher and the front access panel on the washer to look inside. If you see any mud, sediment, or watermarks, those units need professional inspection before re-energizing. Insurance companies will pay for that inspection if you document the conditions before powering up.

Insurance Documentation — What Adjusters Actually Want

Florida-licensed adjusters have a short list. Give them this list cleanly and your claim closes faster:

• Date, time, and named storm of the event
• Photos of the appliance from multiple angles, before and after
• Model and serial number of each affected unit
• Approximate purchase date and original cost (receipts beat estimates)
• Description of failure with specific symptoms
• Written estimate from a licensed repair company for repair-or-replace recommendation
• Photos of any water lines, mud, or visible damage

Citizens, Tower Hill, Universal, Heritage, and the surplus carriers most South Florida homeowners are stuck with all use this same general intake. The faster you assemble it, the faster the claim moves. We provide written estimates in standard insurance-claim format at no extra charge — it is part of the $59 service call.

When to Call Us Versus Replace

If the appliance is under five years old and the damage is electronic — control board, compressor inverter board, motor control unit — repair is almost always cheaper than replacement. Boards run $180 to $450 installed for most consumer brands.

If the appliance is older than ten years and was submerged or shows wide motor or sealed-system damage, replacement is usually the answer. The labor to teardown, dry, treat, and rebuild a 12-year-old front-loader washer routinely exceeds the price of a new midrange unit.

The middle case — five to ten years old, partial damage — is what we are best at evaluating. Bring us in for the $59 diagnostic, get the written estimate, and you have what you need to make the call and to send to your insurance carrier.

Related Reading

• Hurricane Refrigerator Survival Guide
• What Hurricane Floodwater Does to Your Washer and Dryer
• Hurricane Power Surge Damage to Refrigerator Control Boards
• Storm-Damaged Appliance Insurance Claim Guide
• Refrigerator Repair Service

Storm damage? Call (754) 345-4515 — same-day across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.