Tamarac sits in north-central Broward, with Coral Springs on its northern edge and borders shared with Sunrise and Fort Lauderdale, and more than 500 acres of canals and lakes wind through its neighborhoods. It was planned in the 1960s for active retirees, and that origin still shapes its air conditioning. The first neighborhoods are modest one-story houses that have been through several rounds of equipment. The condominium communities that followed in the 1970s and 1980s put air handlers in small closets, with drain lines that pass through walls and floors shared with neighbors. Across both, plenty of systems have an indoor half and an outdoor half bought years apart. Associations have a say in where a condenser goes and when a contractor can work, so a condo replacement begins with the association as much as with the equipment.
Tamarac was incorporated in 1963 around developer Ken Behring's idea of offering active retirees the convenience of a condominium with the privacy of a single-family home. His first neighborhood, Tamarac Lakes on the east side, was made up of one-story, one- and two-bedroom houses grouped around a shared clubhouse, with a monthly fee covering lawn care and exterior painting. The Mainlands and the Woodlands came next. Condominium buildings filled in through the 1970s and 1980s, and Census Bureau estimates now place about 61% of the city's homes in those two decades, with roughly three in ten in buildings of 20 or more units.
More about homes in Tamarac
Those figures explain the two kinds of work here. A unit in a larger condominium building usually means an air handler in an interior closet, an outdoor section on a roof or a shared pad, and an association with rules about both. In the houses, the question is more often what has been changed over the years, and whether the pieces still suit each other.
Tamarac's climate is classed as tropical monsoon, so cooling is needed for most of the year and it is summer humidity, more than heat alone, that decides how long a system has to run.
When most homes were built
- Before 1970
- 1970s–80s
- 1990s–2000s
- 2010s +
Salt-air exposure
- Inland
- Near tidal water
- Oceanfront
Inland, with no direct salt-air exposure
Typical buildings
- Condos
- Single-family homes
- Tamarac Lakes
- Mainlands
- Woodlands
- Woodmont
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