subject: Save Money - Do It Yourself Air Conditioning Maintenance [print this page] Our family has been in the air-con business for over thirty years. We have spent much of that time servicing home A / C units in the Houston area - one of the most demanding environments for these units. One thing we see each year is folks spending tons to fix or replace an A / C units because they didn't do simple upkeep.
Here are a couple of things you can do to save a bunch of cash and to keep your A unit running better.
1 . Replace your air filter one or more times a month and more frequently if you have pets. Our family has a tendency to replace our A / C filters with inexpensive filters and not the high dollar filters that should catch each single spec of dust. Like almost all of you, our air-conditioning unit is older and installing a filter with a tight weave will put too high of a load on our older A / C unit.
2 . Clean your unit's condenser ( the element that sits outside your home ) all the time. Here we are referring to the coils of the condenser. If you look within the condenser you'll see the coils - something that is like a car's radiator. If the coil is covered with leaves or mud, your system will lose much of its potency. Worse yet, this additional load will cost more cash vis higher cooling bills and extra money in blown parts. Having a unclean condenser could cause your air-conditioning unit to run under a heavier load that would lead to Freon leaks and or damaged parts. Naturally, these damaged parts may include a broken compressor.
For those of you with insurance programs that are meant to cover your A / C wishes, keep this under consideration : Insurance corporations may reject your claim if your unit doesn't seem to have received basic upkeep ( like a regular cleaning ) - that ' how critical basic upkeep is to your air-conditioning unit's longevity.
3 . Insulate! You have invested a large amount of money on an air-conditioning unit for your house now ensure that cool air doesn't escape or the heat doesn't come in. At one business we visited the customer whinged the unit wasn't up to speed. We probably did an inspection and revealed that the channels were releasing lots of the cold air into the space between the ceiling tiles and the ceiling. The doors to the outside also had big cracks that were permitting cool air to flee. And ultimately, when we touched the exterior walls they were hot - they'd no insulation .
These are all straightforward things you can do to keep your air conditioning unit running better. Regardless of if you follow these straightforward steps, our industry still commends you have a pro come out and check your air-conditioning unit every year. The HVAC pro will also bother to go up to your loft to check the evaporator and the air con unit's drain pan.
