Sometimes even the best air conditioner installed in your room will not work as it used to do when you bought it. It may be possible that some of its functions stop working or it is not cooling your room properly. There are a lot of factors that can affect this such as the dust which can easily build up over time on your filters, coils and other such hardware inside your air conditioner and there can also be many other things but it is very difficult to figure out the culprit.

This is mainly the reason why we should take care of our appliances with proper maintenance. One of the easiest ways of maintenance is to clean your appliances regularly and that’s what today’s article is all about. Keeping our air conditioner clean will eventually prevent us from spending money on repairs and will also increase efficiency. In this article, we will guide you on how you can clean your air conditioner and keep them running like new.

Benefits of Cleaning the Air Conditioner

If you let the air conditioner run in the dirty state then there is a high chance that it may create a bigger problem in the future. As more and more dust will start to build up it will also become more and more difficult to clean the air conditioner. The coils inside the air conditioner will stop functioning properly and cleaning them will allow them to perform more efficiently again.

The air filters which clean your air collect the dust and debris inside them. After an extensive period of use, the filter will get clogged and won’t provide fresh and clean air like it used to do before. A dirty air filter is a house of diseases. It gives a home to molds, bacteria, fungi, and germs to grow. Nobody wants these to be thrown at them after they turn on the Air Conditioner.

Running an air conditioner inefficiently will increase the monthly electricity bill and in case of a complete failure, you have to bear the expensive repair. Keeping your air conditioner clean will save you a lot of money on the monthly bill as well as the repairs. There are a lot of other benefits of keeping your air conditioner clean. Some of the reasons listed above are the most important ones and you must take care of them.

How often should you clean the Air Conditioner.

The Window Ac comes in a single unit while a split ac comes in two units, one is installed indoors while the other one is installed outside. There are few things inside the air conditioner which requires regular cleaning while other hardware can be cleaned after a long time. We recommend you to clean the Window Ac at least once half-yearly. When it comes to Split AC, Hardware such as the coils are recommended to clean once a year while air filter inside the indoor unit is recommended to clean at least once a month to allow it to provide clean and fresh air all the time.

Window Ac are difficult to clean and you will require a professional to open it and clean it for you. However a split ac can be cleaned easily, so we will only focus on how you can do it and skip the window ac for now.

Clean the Room Air Conditioner.

Cleaning the indoor unit of the air conditioner is very easy and only requires few tools such as a blower and a vacuum cleaner. let’s start by drying the Ac and to do that you have to set it to fan mode and let it run for 30 to 40 minutes. Now remove the air conditioner from the plug and additionally you can turn off the breaker for extra safety.

The next step is to remove the front panel of the Air Conditioner, you just have to unclip from both sides and it will open. Once the panel is opened you will notice the air filter. In most ac, you will find a layer of the filter so you have to remove them all. Now you can clean the air filters which clean water and let it dry.

Right behind the air filter, you will notice the ac fins. They might be blocked with a lot of dust after a long period of use. Use a blower and try to clean all the dust out of these fins. This will increase the efficiency of the air conditioner. An optional step will be to buy an ac cleaner from the market and spray it on the ac fins. It will remove the odor and give fresh air from the ac.

Our next step would be to fit the dried air filters back on their place and clip back the front panel of the ac. Now you can clean the front panel using a cleaning agent and a clean dry cloth to wipe out all the dust. Once you are done with cleaning just set the ac on maximum cooling and let it run for an hour this will ensure that all the water is drained out from the pipe and the ac fins will be cleaned.

Clean the outdoor unit of Room Air Conditioner

You don’t usually require to clean the outdoor unit by yourself. As the outdoor unit is placed outside and it is made to survive any kind of weather.

It is completely sealed and protected with a lot of screws so it is hard to get in. However, during rain, the outdoor unit will be cleaned itself and just in case the inside is dirty and you are noticing any specks of dust on the ac fins then just use a blower at maximum settings and clean them without opening the panel. You can then also use a vacuum cleaner to remove all the dust-out.