by Tim Wood

Created on: March 27, 2009

Most of us are warming up this time of year. Unless you live in the upper Midwest you may be starting to think about turning on your air conditioning instead of using the heat. There are a few things to consider before you decide to flip the switch to the on position. First and foremost you should go to the electrical panel and turn off the breaker. Then you may want to take a walk around the side of the house where the air conditioning compressor resides. This is the large square looking box with a fan, sitting on a concrete pad near your home. It should have two lines coming from inside the house and one should be insulated. You should also find a small insulated control wire accompanying these. Along with the refrigerant lines there should be a cut off switch in a small electrical box most likely mounted on the exterior wall of your home. We don't need to do anything to any of this besides just ensuring that all is accounted for and nothing seems to have been broken, pulled, or disconnected since we used it last summer. The one thing we do need to do is make sure the condenser coil can breath correctly. The coils are located inside this big box towards the outer sheet metal. If you look down inside the unit past the fan you should be able to see them. The A/C works by pulling the hot air from these coils with the fan above so if there are any foreign objects near the coils they won't breath correctly. Start with the garden hose or small compressed air nozzle and try to blow anything loose away from the unit. You will be better off by directing your efforts from the top and pushing anything that is lodged in the fins outward from the inside. Remember, you don't have to worry about the fan starting or the electricity because you shut that off earlier. Now that the coils are clean lets go inside to the room that houses your heating/air conditioning system. What we need to do here is to check the filter and if it has not been replaced lately you should do that now. Make sure that the filter is the right size and seals correctly against the stops. This is the most likely the part that gets overlooked the most. Now that we have that taken care of, let's turn our attention to the small drain line that leads away from this piece of equipment to the drain in the floor. This is know as the condensation line and is at the opposite end of the system from the compressor outside. This line will drain away the moisture that the air conditioner removes from your home during the hot and humid days of summer. If this line has been checked before then it should not be plugged and the water should flow into the drain easily. We want to take a cup of bleach and pour into the bottom of the air conditioner and we should hear it go down the drain. The bleach will kill anything growing inside the line and ensure that the condensation goes down the drain instead of all over your floor. Basically, that's about all there is to it; you should go back to the electrical panel and turn the breaker back on. After the power is back on you will need to adjust the thermostat to a temperature cooler than it currently is in your home and listen for the system to cycle on. Now just sit back and enjoy your nice cool home while the sun just shines away outside!

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