Make Life Easy For Your Air Conditioner
Posted on: 30 November 2018
Want to know one of the best ways to keep an air conditioner in as good a shape as possible for years to come? Make life easy for it. Yes, it's supposed to make your life easier for you by keeping you cool, but overworking the air conditioner will only shorten its lifespan, so you need to give the appliance a break, too. Luckily, caring for an air conditioner is fairly easy -- and the three things you can do to really make it work well don't take long at all.
Size It Properly
Start by getting the right size of air conditioner. Whether you're getting a central system or a window unit, you'll see that each appliance has a rating that shows the amount of space that it can cool. If you get a unit that is too big and powerful, it will cycle on and off prematurely and wear down more quickly. If you get a unit that is too small and lacking in power for the amount of space you're cooling, it will have to work a lot harder and wear out more quickly.
Change That Filter
Most air conditioning systems have a filter. This filter sits at the mouth of the intake vent and catches dust, pet dander, and other particles as the air travels into the air conditioner. Over time -- often as soon as a month -- the filter becomes clogged with these particles. Your air conditioner has to work harder to suck in air through the clogged filter. Instead of doing that to your appliance, change the filter regularly. You may have more than one intake vent, depending on the size of your home and the type of system. Regardless, if your system has a filter, change it (or clean it, as some portable units have reusable filters).
Keep Cool(er)
You make things a lot easier for your air conditioner if you don't make it have to work hard, so your next step is to do what you can to keep your home cool to begin with. Close blinds and curtains during the hottest part of the day, seal air leaks (you need some air coming into your home so you can breathe, but you don't need a huge gap under the front door, for example), and use a ceiling fan. Also investigate ways to cook that don't heat up your home that much, such as using the microwave instead of the big oven. Your air conditioner will have less heat to contend with and thus have a better effect when the appliance turns on.
Along with routine maintenance and inspections, these strategies should help your air conditioner stay in better shape for a longer time. While everyone's situation will be different -- an air conditioner in Minneapolis faces different stresses than an air conditioner in Phoenix -- in general, you should be able to get many years of cooling out of your air conditioner.
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