Excalibur Motor Condominiums
Finished bay floor with cabinets and a television beneath the mezzanine of an owner's unit at Excalibur Motor Condominiums, Fort Myers
Finished bay floor with cabinets and a television beneath the mezzanine of an owner's unit at Excalibur Motor Condominiums, Fort Myers.

Climate control

Air-conditioned storage, with its own system in every unit.

HVAC per unit
Dedicated
Service per unit
220V, 150A, 1 or 3 phase

Almost every storage facility in Lee County advertises climate control. Very few will tell you what that means: which system, serving how many units, held to what temperature, at what relative humidity, for how many hours a day.

Here it means one dedicated HVAC system per unit, on your own meter, serving your unit alone, running to your setting continuously. Below is what that is protecting against, material by material.

Clear ceiling
25 ft
HOA fee
$1,000 / quarter

Florida air

Five months a year of heat and humidity.

From roughly June through October, Southwest Florida runs daily highs in the low nineties with dew points in the low to mid seventies. Relative humidity commonly sits above 70% overnight and above 90% at dawn. Afternoon thunderstorms add a soaking, then the sun returns and the water evaporates into air that is already close to saturated.

An unconditioned garage does not average that out. It amplifies it. A closed metal or masonry building with a dark roof and no air handling runs well above ambient during the afternoon and then cools quickly after sunset. Every time the air temperature drops toward the dew point, moisture condenses onto whatever is coldest in the room, which is usually metal, and usually the inside of a body panel where you cannot see it.

This is the mechanism behind nearly every storage problem below. It is not the heat by itself and it is not the humidity by itself. It is the daily cycle between them.

Cutaway view of a motor condominium unit showing the full bathroom and second floor
Rendering: every unit carries its own full bathroom, its own HVAC and its own meter.

Six things that fail, and why.

  1. 01

    Paint and clear coat

    Condensation that dries in place leaves mineral deposits that etch into clear coat. Under a non-breathable cover the water is trapped against the surface for hours. Repeated cycles produce the dull, spotted finish that costs a paint correction to remove.

  2. 02

    Leather and upholstery

    Heat drives the plasticizers and oils out of hide, which is why a dashboard cracks and a seat bolster goes hard. Humidity does the opposite kind of damage: sustained relative humidity in the seventies is where mold and mildew colonise perforated leather, carpet backing and headliner adhesive.

  3. 03

    Rubber and seals

    Door seals, window seals, hoses and belts take a compression set and harden with thermal cycling. Tires flat-spot faster when the compound is warm and the car does not move, and ozone and heat together accelerate sidewall cracking.

  4. 04

    Electronics

    Moisture works into connectors and creates green corrosion at pins, which shows up as an intermittent fault years later. Heat shortens the life of electrolytic capacitors in modules and head units. Neither failure announces itself while the car is sitting still.

  5. 05

    Batteries

    Self-discharge accelerates sharply with temperature, a lead-acid battery loses charge several times faster at 95°F than at 75°F. Add a modern vehicle's parasitic draw from always-on modules and an unattended car is flat in weeks and sulphated in months.

  6. 06

    Fuel and fluids

    Ethanol-blended fuel attracts water out of humid air in a vented tank. Phase separation, corroded fuel system components and gummed injectors or jets follow. Brake fluid is hygroscopic too, and takes on moisture from the air over a long summer.

One system per unit, on your own meter.

HVAC
One dedicated system per unit, serving that unit alone
Control
Yours, you set it and it runs continuously
Metering
Individually metered; you pay for your own consumption
Electrical service
220V, 150A, 1 or 3 phase per unit, enough for supplementary dehumidification
Envelope
Insulated segmented doors, 60-mil TPO roof
Windows in the bay
None, no solar gain, no ultraviolet exposure
Shared corridors
None, your unit opens to the drive aisle
A finished owner build-out inside an Excalibur motor condominium
A finished owner unit, conditioned and fitted out around the collection.

What conditioned air does not do.

It does not replace maintenance. A car that sits for six months in perfect air still wants fuel stabilizer, a tender, correct tire pressure and an occasional run. Our long-term storage page covers that preparation properly.

It does not run without power. If your contents genuinely cannot tolerate an outage, plan a backup as part of your fit-out and raise it with the association first.

Detail of a delivered unit at Excalibur Motor Condominiums

Every unit is air conditioned. Start with these two plans.

  • An owner's unit at Excalibur Motor Condominiums, Fort Myers: an Aston Martin and a Ferrari on the floor, a red pickup on a four-post lift and the second floor above

    The cars

    Four on the floor, more on lifts

  • Rendering: a Class-A motorhome parked inside a motor condominium

    The RV

    Driven in with the tow car still hitched

  • Rendering: a boat and a Bentley in a single motor condominium bay

    The boat

    Trailer and tow vehicle, nine miles inland

  • Rendering of a finished second floor at Excalibur Motor Condominiums with a wet bar, bottle shelving, a leather sofa, two screens and a slatted wood ceiling, overlooking the bay below

    The second floor

    320 to 960 sq ft, plumbed for a wet bar

Baron floor plan, Cars only

Baron

1,350 sq ft · 320 sq ft second floor · From $399,000

1,350 sq ft with a 320 sq ft second floor, the smallest conditioned volume, and therefore the cheapest to hold at a stable temperature all summer.

Baron plans
Knight floor plan, Cars only

Knight

1,800 sq ft · 450 sq ft second floor

1,800 sq ft, for a larger collection where you still want a single conditioned envelope rather than splitting storage across two locations.

Knight plans

Questions about the air conditioning

The site-wide facts, stated once: 170 mph ultimate design wind speed, FEMA Flood Zone X, outside the Special Flood Hazard Area, roughly nine miles inland from the open Gulf, and an association fee of $1,000 per quarter on a 1,350 sq ft unit, increasing pro rata with size. RV dump station on site, included in the association fee. How the building is engineered and what it costs to own are explained in full on their own pages.

Ask us and we will give you the engineering answer, from the mechanical drawings, rather than describing the system in adjectives.

The service in each unit, 220V, 150A, 1 or 3 phase, has ample capacity for supplementary dehumidification, and some owners with paper, textiles or wine choose to add it.

A breathable cover is useful against dust in conditioned air. A non-breathable cover in an unconditioned space is actively harmful, because it traps condensation against the paint.

Yes. Each unit has its own individually metered 220V, 150-amp electrical service, so you only pay for the electricity you use. It's the fairest approach in a building where usage can vary significantly from one owner to another, whether someone operates a climate-controlled wine room or visits their unit only a couple of times a month.

See every question →

Demand a real answer about climate control.

If air conditioning is the reason you are buying, bring us the engineering questions. We will answer them directly.

Baron floor plan, Cars only

Best-matched plan

Baron

Floor area
1,350 sq ft
Second floor
320 sq ft second floor
Price
From $399,000

For four cars or more with lift(s), a workshop wall and a second floor you will actually use.

Get the HVAC answers, see Baron