How To Clean Coils On Your Central AC Unit

Sorry folks that I have not been here in a while, I have been taking a vacation from blogging about central air conditioning, but I assure you that I am back and will continue to update this blog regularly. So today I thought I would go over a few ways that you can keep your coils clean. I will be going over how to clean both sets of evaporator coils, both on the inside and on the condensing unit.

First off how to the coils on the inside get dirty if I always keep an air filter in there. Well that is because air filters to not filter out everything, if you have read some of my previous posts you will see that some air filters will catch about 20% of dirt and dust while others will catch much more, but the more dust that they catch the less air flow you will get in most cases.

So you have had you central air conditioning for a couple of years now and you have been changing your air filter regularly, you might want to inspect your coils on the air handler to make sure that they are clean. When they are clean they will be bright and shiny, if they look dark or you can see some dirt that is present on them then it is probably time for a routine cleaning.

First thing you do is turn off your central air conditioner and remove the filter. You will need a type of HVAC coil cleaning solution. There are many different kinds that will get the job done, I would stick with something that is not that acidic, as most of the coil cleaners are. Make sure that you read all of the warning labels that are on the bottle of the coil cleaning solution, and do not bypass any of these as it could be dangerous if you do.

Next once you have in hand the coil cleaning solution for your HVAC coils, next you will need a spray bottle that can spray with a decent amount of pressure. Mix up the solution as necessary. One other good tool to have when you are cleaning your coils on your HVAC system would be a fin comb specially designed to straighten out and clean coils.

Next with your air conditioning system shut off start spraying the coils, you will have to follow the directions on the coil cleaning bottle to get the amount of time that you are suppose to let it sit on the coils as there are many different kinds of cleaners out there. Next thing that I would do is go up and down gently on the coils with my fin comb, grabbing all of the dirt and sludge that is built up on it.

Then you wash the solution off with water, make sure that you get all of it off before turning your HVAC system back on. That’s about it really for the inside cleaning, for the outside cleaning I do not even use coil cleaner, some people do but I do not see the need unless the coils are extremely dirty.

The first thing that I do when cleaning coils on the outside unit is I secure the power to the condensing unit, this is very important. If you attempt to do this method without the power off you can really get injured or mess up your condensing unit. Once the power is off and I am sure that it is off I will make sure that the electrical components are covered well, which they should be since condensing units constantly get rained on.

Then I will grab a garden hose with a high pressure spray nozzle and start spraying at the coils. Some condensing units you might have to take off the blower fan to get down in there good, or remove some of the side guards to make sure that the coils get a real good cleaning. That’s it, just use a garden hose with a high pressure spray nozzle to clean the coils on the condensing unit.