Maintaining your Air Conditioner
FRANK: I’m sitting outside beside the air conditioning unit and this one is about 12 or 13 years old and its still working. But a couple of things to remember to make it work even better. This one is not restricted in any way for air flow. There are no plants right beside it, there’s no box on it, so air can come in very easily through these coils and out the top. Something to always take into account – keep them clear for air flow. The second thing to do is, clean them once in awhile with a hose. And before we touch this unit with any water or anything, we’re going to shut off the power, there’s usually a disconnect switch like this one. And if we flip it over it’s off, just like a switch. What we can use is a garden hose next – on the lightest possible spray. All we’re trying to do is to remove the accumulated dirt that’s there, the grass clippings and anything else that will prevent the air from flowing. So very carefully we’re going to rinse the coils here and we’ll see everything coming down. That’s what we do on the outside. We’ll also do some work on the inside.
FRANK: If you want the air conditioning to work well, we suggest that you adjust the flows to different rooms. The basement’s going to be cooler. This supply duct to the basement has a grill. You can close this, that will reduce the amount of cold air coming to the basement. But if you do want to increase it to the other areas of the house you can open these in those rooms. But the ductwork, if it’s exposed like this, there are handles that are accessible and you can adjust the flow to the different rooms. In this case, because it’s the basement one, let’s close it. We turn the handle in this direction – this is opposite the flow, and it closes this. For those other rooms in the house, let’s turn the handle this way – and it opens up maximum flow. You want the air conditioning, you want the cool air to go to the first floor and the second floor, let’s stop it from over cooling the basement.
FRANK: The other half of an air conditioning system lies in your ductwork. This is normally not seen, we can see it through the plexiglass in this unit. And the importance of this unit is, this is where the cold comes into the house. The air passes through this coil and it gets cold and circulated through the whole house. The water gets also extracted out of the air and that flows through a tube. So if you ever see liquid around, your tube is probably blocked and you need someone to come in and look after it for you. But also this coil needs air passing through it so the filter has to trap all the dirt, and the filter’s replaceable. It’s really hard to clean this coil so take care of this coil and your air conditioning system will work just fine.