Appliance Repair by Climate: Florida vs Georgia Data

Two states, 43,585 completed repairs, and almost the same invoice: a Florida repair with a part replaced runs a median of $375, a Georgia one $365. Ten dollars apart. But the machines fail in visibly different ways, and the difference is large enough to change what a technician packs before leaving the shop.

This page compares the two largest territories in the Bozmanfix Repair Index, our own record of 65,924 completed appliance repairs across Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Pennsylvania. Florida contributes 22,583 completed repairs and Georgia 21,002. Every figure comes from invoices customers actually paid, not from surveys or estimating calculators. When citing any figure here, the source is the Bozmanfix Repair Index.

📌 Key Figures for Citation

• The gas igniter is 5.11% of Georgia oven and range calls and 0.97% of Florida’s — a five-fold gap, and the widest separation between the two states in the entire dataset.
• The bake or broil element reverses it: 2.60% of Florida oven calls against 1.06% in Georgia. The same appliance, the opposite failure, because one state cooks on gas and the other on electricity.
• Defrost system failures are 4.23% of Florida refrigerator calls against 2.01% in Georgia — twice the rate, measured across 4,041 and 3,081 refrigerator repairs.
• Refrigerators are 41.6% of Florida’s classified work and 35.3% of Georgia’s; dishwashers invert it at 13.4% against 18.3%.
• A repair with a part replaced costs a median of $375 in Florida and $365 in Georgia. Six of eight appliance categories land within $20 of each other across the state line.
• Same-day scheduling: 24.8% of Florida jobs against 19.6% in Georgia, from 27,997 and 26,120 scheduled visits.

Each component figure is a share of that state’s own completed repairs for that appliance, so the difference in how many jobs each state contributes does not distort the comparison.

🔥 The Kitchen Fuel Line Is the Sharpest Border

Nothing else in this dataset separates the two states as cleanly as the oven. Georgia kitchens run on natural gas distributed by Atlanta Gas Light; Florida kitchens are predominantly electric. The repair record reads that difference directly.

Shares are of 924 Florida and 940 Georgia completed oven and range repairs.

A hot-surface igniter is a consumable: it glows to open the gas valve on every cycle and degrades with use. An electric bake element is a resistance coil that eventually blisters and breaks. Neither failure is a defect, and neither state’s ovens are worse. What the numbers show is that the same appliance category produces an entirely different service pattern depending on what comes out of the wall, and that a repair company working both states cannot stock one van the same way for both.

The practical figure for an owner: an igniter replacement runs a median of $350 in Georgia and a bake element $330 in Florida, both including the part, the labor and the service call. Those are within twenty dollars of each other, which is why the state medians barely move. Detail on each: gas range repair and oven temperature problems.

❄️ Humidity Shows Up in the Freezer, Not the Thermostat

The second clear divergence is refrigeration, and it is concentrated in one system.

Shares are of 4,041 Florida and 3,081 Georgia completed refrigerator repairs.

Every moisture-related refrigerator failure runs roughly twice as often in Florida. The defrost system is the clearest case and the largest sample: a heater and a timer whose whole job is to melt frost off the evaporator coil before it blocks airflow. The more humid the air entering the cabinet each time a door opens, the more often that circuit works, and the more often it fails. The door gasket result points the same way from the other end, since a gasket that no longer seals is what lets the humid air in.

This is the one place in the data where a household can act on the difference. A gasket that has stopped closing cleanly is a $397 repair in Florida that prevents a $376 defrost repair later, and the two failures feed each other. The symptom that both produce is the same and it is the most misread in the trade: the freezer stays cold while the fresh-food section warms, because the cold is made in the freezer and blown across. It reads like a dying compressor and it is not. Background: refrigerator not cooling and correct refrigerator temperature.

🧺 Laundry Splits the Other Way

Washer shares are of 2,161 Florida and 2,091 Georgia completed repairs; dryer shares are of 867 and 626.

Dryers invert the oven result. Georgia sends more work to the heating element, Florida more to the drum rollers and the drive belt, which are the mechanical parts. We will not invent a climate mechanism for that on these sample sizes. What is worth stating is the caution that applies in both states: a heating element that fails early is usually reporting a blocked vent rather than a weak part, because restricted airflow makes the element run hotter and cycle longer. That is the one dryer fault that is a fire risk rather than an inconvenience, and it is why we look at the vent before quoting an element. See dryer not heating and dryer fire statistics.

📊 What Each State Actually Calls Us About

Shares are of 9,724 Florida and 8,726 Georgia completed repairs where a single appliance type was recorded.

Florida is a refrigeration state and Georgia is a dishwasher state, by roughly five points each way. Part of the refrigeration gap is the second refrigerator: garages and lanais in Florida hold beverage and overflow units that run all summer in unconditioned space, and those machines generate service calls that a single-refrigerator household never produces. We publish that as the likeliest explanation rather than a finding, because our records show the appliance and the address, not whether the cabinet stood in a kitchen or a garage.

🗓️ The Calendar Barely Notices the State Line

The obvious hypothesis is that a hotter state should have a sharper summer peak. It does not.

Share of each state’s total jobs falling in that month, pooled across years.

Both states peak in July and trough in the autumn, and Georgia’s peak is marginally the higher of the two despite the milder climate. Georgia’s spring is the livelier season, running 9.1% in March against Florida’s 8.1%. The honest reading is that appliance failure follows household use more than outdoor temperature: more people at home, more loads, more cooking. We do not publish a year-by-year seasonal claim, because the peaks do not line up consistently between years. The pooled view is the defensible one, and the fuller treatment is at when appliances break.

🧭 What This Changes for an Owner

Almost nothing about which state is cheaper, and quite a lot about which diagnosis to expect.

The bill does not move across the state line. Six of eight appliance categories sit within $20 of each other, and the two state medians are $10 apart. If you have read that repairs cost more in one southern state than another, this dataset does not support it. What differs is the repair, not the rate.

The likely diagnosis does move. An oven that will not heat in Georgia is most often an igniter; in Florida it is most often an element or a board. A refrigerator that will not cool in Florida is twice as likely to be a defrost fault as the same complaint in Georgia. Knowing which is common where is what lets a technician arrive with the part on the van instead of ordering it, and it is the reason the same company staffs the two states differently.

One maintenance item is worth more in Florida than in Georgia. The door gasket. Every humidity-linked refrigerator failure in the table above runs about twice as often on the Florida side, and the gasket is the part that decides how much humid air gets in. Closing that one gap is the cheapest intervention available on this page.

📊 Methodology

• Source. Completed service records from Bozmanfix operations, 22,583 completed repairs in Florida and 21,002 in Georgia, drawn from a total book of 65,924.
• Appliance attribution. A job counts toward an appliance only when exactly one appliance type was recorded on it. Jobs naming two are excluded, so a refrigerator visit cannot contaminate a dishwasher figure.
• Component attribution. Identified from the technician’s written description of the work performed. A job counts once, toward the first component matched. Descriptions are not present on every job, so component shares are conservative by construction: they count confirmed cases against all completed repairs for that appliance in that state.
• Prices. Every median is the full invoice — part, labor and the service call together — on jobs above $200, which is the floor where a component was actually replaced. Component-only prices quoted elsewhere are not comparable.
• Geography. State assigned from the service address. Florida work centres on Tampa Bay, Miami and South Florida, Jacksonville and the Gulf Coast; Georgia work centres on metropolitan Atlanta.
• What these numbers are not. They are shares of service calls, not failure rates per unit installed. We do not know how many appliances of each type sit in each state, so nothing here says one state’s appliances are less reliable.
• Figures we did not publish. Compressor pricing diverges sharply between the two states in our raw records, but the divergence tracks how the work was written up rather than a demonstrable price difference, so we left it out rather than publish a number we cannot stand behind.

📎 Citing This Data

Every figure on this page may be quoted freely with attribution to the Bozmanfix Repair Index. A standard citation looks like this:

If you are writing about regional differences in appliance service and need a cut we have not published — a specific metropolitan area, a longer component list, or a different appliance — ask and we will run it. The underlying records are ours and the queries take minutes. Related datasets: what breaks by brand, when appliances break, most commonly repaired appliances and appliance repair statistics.

Questions About This Data