The most important thing that we will tell you to prepare your air conditioning system for the hot Sacramento summer will always be to change your filter. This will always and forever be the number one thing that you can do to protect the equipment from premature failure as well as highest efficiency and performance year after year. Unsure where your filter is located or need some more guidance on filters? Check out this post.
The next thing that you can do to prepare your air conditioning system for summer would be scheduling a preventative maintenance with one of our expert technicians.
However, we understand that some customers want to do some of this themselves. So here is a quick demonstration on how you can clean your outdoor condenser coil yourself. The key is to direct the water from the interior of the unit to the exterior. DO NOT spray water into the unit directly from the outside.
The outdoor coil is dirty on the outside of the coil, so by spraying the water into the unit, you are actually pushing the water into the coil further and making it more impacted with dirt and pollen. You always want to spray the water through to flush the debris OUT of the unit.
Here is a quick video as an example.
How to Clean your Outdoor Condenser Coil
In this video, Eric is using a car soap, not a chemical cleaner to clean the coil. You don’t have to use a soap, just a garden nozzle with a good amount of pressure but not TOO much pressure and definitely not a pressure washer. Too much pressure can cause the soft metal of the coil to bend.
Gently sweeping across inside the unit starting at the top and working your way down, you can see it can be a bit awkward with the fan in the way, but it isn’t difficult. After leaning from the inside he does show you that you can gently wash the outside at a downward angle and less pressure, again from the top to bottom.
If you do use soap, you will want to duplicate this entire process with just water to rinse the soap and dirt off of the coil.
And that is it!
Stay tuned for more DIY tips this summer.
*If you don’t feel comfortable performing this task yourself, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Just call or email us and we would be happy to schedule a preventative maintenance for you.