Nothing is better than having an ice-cold house when you get home from a long day of work in the summertime. With different AC repair tips and tricks, you can ensure that your home stays cold in the summertime. Getting your first taste of air conditioning repair and maintenance can be very satisfying. Read this blog to find a few tips to make sure you can handle minor AC repairs at your home or office with no problems. When it comes to the point that you cannot handle the repair then you will at least know what the issue is with a better understanding.
The three things we will go over in this blog are going to be very important and should be performed as frequently as possible for best results. Getting your AC repair done yourself is sometimes easy depending on what the situation is.
- Changing indoor air filter.
- Cleaning your outside unit.
- Keeping the drain line clear.
The first one should be simple and easy to do. With that said it is also the easiest to mess up and forget about. The most common size thickness of an air filter is 1 inch. If you have a one-inch-thick air filter in your home or office air conditioning system, it should be changed approximately every month. This is the problem; the air filter companies make a filter that says it will last three months and is only one inch thick. This filter is also very expensive and blocks tons of air flow restricting flow terribly. This is usually left in for 6 months because you think you have to get your money out of this thirty-dollar filter. When in fact from day one you were restricting your air flow and every piece of dirt it picks up restricts your AC units air flow even more. Get the medium filter quality and replace it every month like the manufacture recommends.
Cleaning your outside unit is a little harder than changing a home air conditioning filter but with a try I’m sure it can be done even by the most unskilled homeowners. When your air conditioning system runs outside it moves air across a set of coils. With time and dirt, they will get dirty and won’t transfer the heat as efficiently. With some water and possible some condenser cleaner this dirt will come off. It is recommended to clean your outside unit one a year. If you are in the midst of a cottonwood tree in Mckinney, TX then you are going to have to wash it a few extra times when it blooms. When you are spraying down the coils just pay attention to not put too much water pressure on them as to bend them. NO PRESSURE WASHERS!!! Please do not for one second think that a pressure washer is going to be ok for this task. This condenser coil is only set up for a little air and a little water every once in a while, for cleaning. That much pressure is sure to ruin the coils and their heat transfer ability.
Keeping the indoor drain line clear is important due to the fact that your single home air conditioning system can produce up to 15 gallons of water per day. That is a lot of water. Every year it is good practice to get this line cleared. The homeowner can pour bleach down the drain in the spring to help keep it unclogged throughout the year. This is not effective if the drain line is already clogged. It will only lead to a giant mess. Getting the water out of the line and cutting it is the only way to clear it at that point. Sometimes cutting and emptying into a bucket is the best way. Next, they make special tools to clean home air conditioning drain lines. It is called a Gallo Gun. It uses small CO2 Cartridges and puts pressure on the drain line. A modified air compressor could do the same thing but you would either need a rubber cone attachment for the pipe to hose connection. Or you could use a rag. Wrap the rag around the hose and stick it in the pipe till the rag is tight and hold it tight as you can while putting air on the line
This article was written by Steven Cardinale with Changing SEO LLP.