When it comes to keeping your home cool and comfortable, a well-maintained air conditioner is key. Regular cleaning not only improves the efficiency of your unit but also ensures better air quality in your living space. Follow these 4 simple steps to clean your air conditioner like a professional.

Step 1: Turn Off the Power

Safety first! Before you start cleaning your air conditioner, make sure to turn off the power to the unit. This will prevent any accidents or injuries while you work on it. You can do this by switching off the circuit breaker that controls the AC unit.

Step 2: Clean or Replace the Filter

The filter in your air conditioner plays a crucial role in trapping dust, dirt, and other particles from the air. Over time, the filter can get clogged, reducing the efficiency of your unit. Remove the filter and either clean it thoroughly or replace it with a new one. This simple step can improve airflow and indoor air quality significantly.

Step 3: Clean the Coils

The coils in your air conditioner can also accumulate dirt and debris, affecting the unit's performance. Use a soft brush to gently clean the evaporator and condenser coils. Be careful not to bend the fins on the coils, as this can restrict airflow. For stubborn dirt, you can use a mild detergent and water to clean the coils thoroughly.

Step 4: Check the Drainage System

Clogged drain channels can lead to water leaks and moisture buildup in your air conditioner. Inspect the drain channels for any blockages and clear them using a stiff brush or a wire and running water jet. This will ensure proper drainage and prevent water damage to your unit. The AIRCONcare Cleaning Solution will dissolve bio-slime and reduce build-up with regular cleaning. 

By following these 4 simple steps, you can clean your air conditioner like a professional and keep it running smoothly all season long. Remember to perform regular maintenance to extend the life of your unit and enjoy a cool, comfortable home environment.

It worked beautifully. The air conditioner just kept the air cool enough to dry out the humidity without freezing the place. I kept the windows slightly ajar to ensure there was constant fresh air lest it became stuffy. It worked out really well. 😀👍

Photo by Pixabay

Though the right temperature is different for everyone, a few degrees will make all difference. The problem is the shifting in outside temperature through the night in just a few degrees can push the thermostat to shut the compressor off for the rest of the night. And since all windows are shut when the AC is turned on, you will be breathing stale uncooled air for most of the night when the ac cuts out. You will end up with a poor night's sleep or worse, wake up with a headache. 

The solution is to leave gaps in your windows. (Minimum 1,  or better, 2 windows.) This should not affect the room temperature as much as the temperature difference is not that much.

My air conditioner became really dirty. Here's how I cleaned it myself with the awesome AIRCONcare Kit from AIRCONcarepro Australia. Saved myself a ton of money. So Easy and Satisfying 👍👍

Living in small tight homes might be hazardous to your health if you do not take

these steps highlighted here. If you live in small tiny quarters, the air quality
dynamics are crucial and more sensitive as compared to normal living spaces.
Certain critical considerations which we normally take for granted must be
carefully looked at. Mold and mildew require three things to grow.

1. Moisture
2. Food
3. Still stagnant air

Inorganic materials with a biofilm can be sufficient to change dormant mold
spores in the air we are breathing right now into active fungus growth.
The flowing steps are intended to deprive of one or more of these factors for
mold growth.

Steps

The flowing steps are intended to deprive of one or more of these factors for mold growth.

 1. Make sure there is adequate ventilation. In a small living space in harsh weather conditions, this may not be as easy as it sounds. Often, to keep the weather conditions from the room, proper mechanical sealing and insulation of the doors and windows are done to keep the room from the extreme heat or cold outside. This often in itself becomes the source of the problem. If a small room too tightly sealed, ventilation is stifled. Remove or reduce weather seals to allow for the right amount of air inlet into the space. As weather permits, regularly open windows and doors to allow full circulation to channel fresh outside air right through the room.

2. Exhaust all high concentration of moisture at the source. This means a ducted cooker hood and exhaust fan for the shower. These exhaust systems need to be checked for CFM airflow rate to make sure that they are working properly. If the room is too well sealed, these ventilators will not work properly. See tips below on how to do that.

3. Vacuum and wipe down the room regularly to keep the level of dust particles in check. Most of these dust particles are skin flakes and linen fiber. Frequently wash bed sheets and linens to minimize fibers and skin flakes build up. In clean room operations in wafer fabs for IC making, skin flakes have been identified as the number one culprit to particle contamination. It is by far the largest source of particle generation.

 4. Clean the air conditioner regularly to prevent biofilm from forming in the fins. Biofilm is formed from the dead skin flakes from the human body. Because there is a layer of oil on our skin, these skin flakes will stick onto any surface they come into contact with, especially the path of the airflow in a ductless air conditioner, i.e. the cooling fins and the rotor blades. Bacteria colonies will form on these skin layers producing a bio-slime which in turns binds more tightly on the surfaces they adhere to. As the biofilm get thicker and covers more surface of the cooling coil and fins, they lose their hydrophilic properties preventing the condensate from draining off. This in turn reduces the air conditioner's ability to dehumidify the room especially from moisture sources like hot showers. At the same time, the skin flakes also become a food source for mold as well. Once mold take root in the air conditioner, it can spread spore all over the room; on the ceiling, under the mattress, on the walls. Practically, you could see mold growing where the air is the most stagnant. By cleaning the air conditioner, just plain vacuuming or brushing is not sufficient. Some type of chemical solution cleaning system is absolutely necessary to keep the ac unit clean and fully operational. 

 4. Avoid leaving the air conditioner turned on all the time. This could mean it is less likely that adequate ventilation will be practiced to avoid wasting conditioned (cooled or warmed) air.

Tips

• To find if the room is not too tightly sealed, check the CFM airflow rate at the outlet of the exhaust with an anemometer or airflow meter. With the door and windows closed. (CFM airflow is the rate at which a certain volume of air moves in a certain period of time. CFM stands for cubic feet per minute)

• The airflow should approach the actual rating of the exhaust system. If the exhaust is significantly (say 50% or even lower) less than the actual rating, you might reduce the mechanical sealing of the room. For every exhaust, there must be adequate air inlet in order for the exhaust ventilation to work properly. According to ASHRAE standard 62-89 approved in 1989, all living spaces must have at least 0.35 ACH (air exchange rate) . What this means is there must be at least 35% of the air in a room must be changed out in every hour. A calculation can be made to find out the adequate CFM required for a given room size.

• A split ductless air conditioner is the air conditioner of choice for tight spaces since it mounts on the wall away from the floor maximizing the space while giving the necessary power and coverage for both heating and/or cooling. It is important to clean these air conditioners properly.

• Read "How To Remove Mould from Wall Air Conditioners" for clear instructions how to do this without creating a mess. Find out how using an aircon wash bag can enable cleaning the fan coil and the rotor blades in one go without dismantling the system off the wall.

Warnings

• Given the right conditions, mold growth acceleration is logarithmic.

• Of the 3000 species of mold, about 40 are considered toxic.

• Apart from mold, oxygen deprivation and carbon dioxide buildup can easily be the result of insufficient ventilation which can result in frequent headaches and nausea.

• The dangers of a ductless split air conditioner is that it is ductless. There is no path leading to outside air. Hence, adequate and frequent ventilation must be designed in elsewhere in the room.

You must get an aircon wash bag.  It is a custom bag designed as a waste water catchment that you wear around the split ac unit (called an FCU-Fan Coil Unit) that is on the wall. This way you do not need to tear the system down like professionals do.

• Buy a good coil cleaner - I try to avoid the foam type coil cleaners because they can be messy and the foam spreads everywhere. If not done properly, the foam may not penetrate the coils properly. Also, these foam sprays are not designed to clean the rotor fan blades properly as well. So I would stick to liquid solution sprays. Now coil cleaner selection is critical. Especially if you have the newer split air conditioners that come with their cooling coils coated with a hydrophilic layer (Keeps the condensate water flowing over the coils easily to improve airflow strength. You can always tell because the coils tend to be blue in color due the epoxy coating of the hydrophilic coating. Most coil cleaners in the market are designed to attack organics. And what's worst is ac services tend to use strong caustic or acidic chemicals in their cleaning due to their lower costs. Unfortunately, these chemicals tend to destroy this coating. Try to find one that is certified and tested free of cyto-toxic or VOC's (Volatile Organic Chemical) residue left behind after cleaning. 

• Start spraying the chemical solution over the coils. Try to spray at an angle onto the cooling fins surface as well as directly into the coils. Make sure the solution can reach as far into the coils as possible. One good suggestion is to put the nozzle as close to the fins as possible. 

• Next Spray the rotary blades hidden in the outlet of the airflow. To get good results, you will need to reach have a far reaching spray nozzle much like those of the pressure garden sprayer. Make sure to coat all the blades with the cleaning solution. 

• Wait 5 minutes for the cleaning solution to work. Then flush the coil and rotary blades with water sprayers and see all the dirt and grime flow into the aircon wash bag. Note: some of the water from the coils will flow via the drainpipe. 

Tips

* Use the long reach nozzle or a toothbrush to push the rotary blades round to get at all the blades.
* If your sprayer is strong enough, the pressure alone will cause the blades to rotate if you focus the spray on the lower third of the rotor facing you.
* A used tooth brush can be very useful in dislodging and scrubbing some of the stubborn spots on the coils and everywhere else, especially areas near the airflow outlet.
* Be gentle and try not to exert too much pressure when brushing the cooling fins. They do bend and collapse easily under too much force.
* Before you begin, you could remove the drain plug from the drip tray in your aircon unit so allow all the dirt to drain into the wash bag instead. This can avoid letting too much dirt flowing into the drainpipe.
* To avoid choking drainpipe, you should spray some coil cleaning solution into the drainpipe. Then flush water down the drainpipe. If you can locate the other end, use a wet shop vac if you have one to suck out and clear the drainpipe. This should be done especially if you have a leaking aircon.

Warnings

• Turn OFF the mains power supply breakers to the air conditioner unit, including the compressor before you start this cleaning process.
• Avoid spraying any solution on the right side where the electronics are at.
• There are lots of coil cleaners that recommend leaving their chemical solution on the coils and let the condensate clean and flush it away. I advise against following these instructions. Firstly, the flushing action allows you to remove the tons of trapped dirt in your air conditioners. Secondly, leaving cleaning chemicals on the coils give rise to VOCs (Volatile Organic Chemicals) which are usually not healthy for our respiratory system even if they are organically natural products. Long term exposure to breathing such concentrations that are strong enough to clean is not advisable.

Over time, this moisture breeds bacteria and mold which would grow into colonies. The Slimy substance is what we call bio-slime or bio-film which is the byproduct waste of these bacterial colonies. They eventually clog up your cooling fins and drainpipes causing significant drop in airflow and leakage in condensate. 

How To Clean Out This Slimy Substance in Less Than 20 Minutes From Your AC?

But as luck would have it on a summer night when it was 28°C and sticky humid, I was about to go to bed when I heard this dripping sound coming from the air conditioner in my room. I turned on the lights to investigate. Lo and behold, water was draining out from my split air conditioner. It was almost like pouring out rather than just gentle droplets. I had to act quickly to shut off the air conditioner. All my stuff below the air conditioner were wet. 

I really dreaded having to sleep without the air conditioner on a night like this. Tired, frustrated... so I did what everyone else did- opened up my facebook and vented all my @##$%#%%Sh%t there! Within 3 minutes of posting this on my facebook, there was a knock on my door. It was my neighbour who happened to be on his facebook at the time I was posting. He handed me a pouch and said "Here, just wear this over your air conditioner, turn it on again and go to bed."

I was dumbfounded. What luck! Someone up there must like me. Turns out the pouch he handed me was an air conditioner wash bag made by airconcare. This wash bag is designed to be worn over an ac blower unit on the wall to catch all the waste water while using their cleaning solution to spray and clean the cooling coils and fan rotor. It just so happened that my neighbour had bought a full kit planning to use the next day. But he thought of how it would helped me when he saw my post on facebook. Needless to say, I ended up have a really great night's sleep being really grateful for this good fortune. In the morning, the bag was full with about 2 litres of water but the floor beneath it was dry. The air conditioner continued to operate without much problem. 

I ended up ordering a few wash bags and a full kit from their online store that very morning. I continued to run my air conditioner every night this way day until the following week when things were a bit more in control. I just had to empty the wash bag every morning. Even then, that was really easy to do. I just held on to both sides of the elastic band, lift up the bag and allow the elastic band to snap free from over the ac and pour the waste water into my toilet bowl. A real life saver! 

I am very grateful for this product and for my neighbour who came to my aid when I needed it. "

- guest post from one of our customer who wished to remain anonymous.