Cleaning the AC

We only had a short time back at the house in Minnesota. But, yet again, the air conditioner was struggling to cool our house and I'd had enough. The past year at least this has been an annoyingly consistent issue and, for a time, I'd chalked it up mostly to the orientation of our house (with the back, our dining room, kitchen, master bedroom all facing northwest, i.e. the afternoon and evening sun) combined with the fact we only have a single zone for a three level house. Searching for answers I started by going and looking at the unit outside and learned I should've done that sooner.

It turns out the coils, inside the more apparent outer shell, were entirely caked in dust and other gunk. To be honest I'm surprised the AC worked at all, it could hardly breathe. We must've been wasting quite a bit of energy for however long it's been like that. I have to think all the construction around us the last few years played a large part but the state of our machine was absurd for a less than 10 year old house.

Look at this!

At first I felt like an incompetent homeowner, and maybe I am to an extent. But after talking to a number of other men who I think are more capable with such things (my dad, a couple friends...), who also have never done cleaning maintenance on the outside central air conditioning unit, I stopped beating myself up so much.

But still, something needed to be done, and fast. A YouTube video told me you can pretty cheaply and easily buy foam cleaning spray, give it time to soak in, then rinse it out with a gentle hose setting. And that's exactly what I set out to do.

It ended up being a bit of a time crunch, trying to get this done for going to church Sunday morning, but I did get it done. The foam spray was with the air conditioning stuff at Home Depot. Turn off the breaker to the AC, I did this inside since there was a little lock on the exterior one. Removing the outside panels (and putting them back on) was the hardest part. I didn't need to vacuum anything out of the inside because there aren't any trees around. It took multiple goes with the spray foam, waiting about 15 minutes each time, to get everything out of the coils, but that stuff was effective, and useful. I used the 'shower' function on the hose sprayer so the metal wasn't warped. (Don't use a pressure washer!) The water and everything drained out of the bottom no problem. I had to fight with the shell longer than anything else, that was annoying and difficult since the unit is elevated, but it did eventually go back together. Then the unit was ready to work better again.

Foam spray

Cleaned out

Back together

We haven't actually been at the house much since I finished this job, but I do think it's working a lot better. The air is blowing well upstairs though it takes a little while for the whole house to cool down. I do wonder if more steps would be ideal, having an actual pro look at the Freon or whatever, or getting the air ducts cleaned out for a couple examples. But for now we're certainly in a better spot than we were before. I should probably get a cover for the winter too.

This is a reminder to check on your AC unit. It may be worth it.