If you have a window air conditioner and are getting ready to install it you may want to think about cleaning it before hand.
My grandfather taught me how to clean and check window air conditioners when I was about twelve years old and he was running his own company. Back then window air conditioners where not cheap and it was cheaper to take them in to be serviced than to buy a new one.
Nowadays the opposite is true. It is usually cheaper to buy a new one than have a old one serviced. There are things you can do to prolong having to get a new one and cleaning is one of them.
Or you might have just come home from a garage sale where you picked up a used window air conditioner. (Hopefully you tried it out before you bought it). We will assume that you did and now you have it home and you want to get it in the window before it gets too hot out.
The steps I am going to give you are fairly simple. It should only take between 30 minutes to an hour from start to finish. That’s as long as you are somewhat mechanically inclined.
Window air conditioners are fairly simple. The basics are you have the casing (outer shell), evaporate coil, condenser coil, compressor, fan and fan motor, and controls.
The first step to cleaning the window air conditioner is to remove the outer cover. This is simply done by removing a few machine screws or screws. There are usually four to six of these on the bottom and or side. There are usually a couple hidden in the slide for the window skirt also.
Now these machine screws that I was talking about normally have a hex head on them like a standard nut or bolt. They also usually have a Phillips head slot in the center. As I have been around heating and air conditioning since I was five this is pretty much the standard.
The best tool that I found for working on room window air conditioners is a multi screwdriver or six in one. This is so you will have a small and large flat screwdriver, a small and large Phillips head screwdriver, a ¼ inch and 5/16 inch nut driver. (most of the machine screws you will encounter are either ¼ or 5/16 of an inch.
Now that we have the cover off all we really want to do is clean the coils. We also want to make sure that the drain on the back of the pan is open so the condensation will drip out of the back of the unit and not into the room where it is installed.
To clean the coils all we want to do is flush with clean water, maybe if its greaser we might also want to use a mild soap and water flush.
To make the soap wash just mix half water and half dish soap in a spray bottle and spray the coils.
We want to use a garden hose without a nozzle on it. We do NOT want a high pressure to flush the coil. All we are trying to do is get the dirt out from in between the fins to allow the coil to breath properly again.
If we have to much pressure we can bend the fins. The fins are made usually out of aluminum and are very easy to bend. When they bend they restrict the airflow same as the dirt that we are trying to get rid of.
Now that the unit is clean and you let it air dry it is time to reinstall the cover. Once the cover is back in place the window air conditioner is ready to install.
