Hawaii sees constant sunshine year round, so you may be running your air conditioner more often to keep your home or business cool. The summer months can especially put a strain on your electric bill. Jeffery Orloff, former About.com Guide, offers 7 easy tips to make your AC work more efficiently this summer.
Check out his article here:Top 7 Make Your Air Conditioner Work More Efficiently
Here’s a brief overview of his 7 tips:
- Leave your thermostat alone
- Keep curtains closed
- Turn on a fan
- Get rid of hot air
- Use a dehumidifier
- Keep your air conditioning unit out of the sun
- Save chores for the right time
Jeffery’s tips focus on using your AC efficiently.But what about AC maintenance? What can you do to protect and prolong the life of your AC unit year round?
Below are twotips to not only help your AC run more efficiently, but also extend the life of your AC unit:
Maintenance Tips
Protective Coating
Air conditioning coating on the fins and coils will help your air conditioning unit run more efficiently as well as prolong the life of your unit. Coatings help with heat exchange efficiencies as well as allowing ambient air to easily flow through the fins.
The ideal time to coat your fins and coils is when the unit is brand new. With proper maintenance (which we’ll discuss below), the coating should last 3-5 years minimum. Additionally, most coating companies offer a 3-5 year warranty.
Maintenance
Poor maintenance is visually obvious: you will see debris (leaves, feathers, branches, salt build up, etc.) stuck between the fins. Another way to determine if maintenance is lacking is when the fins begin to flake or fall off the unit. This is a sign that salt build up was rinsed only with water and not an industrial cleaner. When the salt becomes liquefied it gets deposited between the fins and coils and it will begin to corrode the fins from the inside out. Unfortunately this is a very common issue.
Thus, maintenance of the condensing unit is important. Here’s what you can do:
- A) Hire an A/C contractor who can complete the required maintenance
- OR
- B) Maintain the A/C unit yourself. In this case, every 3-6 months a proper wash down should be done to remove debris. If salt build up is evident an industrial cleaner should be used and the unit should then be flushed thoroughly with water.Fins and coils should be washed down every 3 months.
Proper protection and maintenance can not only help your air conditioning unit run more efficiently, but will help your unit last longer. Too often I see units that are poorly maintained and protected, which ends up increasing costs. If you continuously take care of your unit, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of stress (and money) down the road.