How to Keep Your Air Conditioner in Optimal Condition

Maintaining your air conditioner is essential for ensuring its efficiency and longevity. To keep your AC in optimal condition, you should routinely replace or clean the filters, check for leaks, and perform preventive maintenance.

Replace or Clean Filters

The most important maintenance task to ensure the efficiency of your air conditioner is to routinely replace or clean your filters. Look for the minimum filter performance value, or MERV, which ranges from 1 to 12 for domestic air conditioning units; the higher the number, the better filtration it will provide.

Check for LeaksDucts can lose up to 30 percent of airflow due to leaks, and window air conditioning units are notoriously difficult to seal properly. To find leaks, use the old “smoke” trick. Federal laws require air conditioning units to be much more efficient than they were just 10 years ago. In the case of central air conditioning, look for the seasonal energy efficiency index (SEER); in the case of window units, the measure is simply called the energy efficiency index (EER).

Standards require an SEER of 13 and an EER of 8, but devices with higher numbers will cost less to operate.

Perform Preventive Maintenance

Preventive air conditioning maintenance involves providing adequate care at regular intervals to minimize the likelihood that the system will suffer major problems in the long term. Significant benefits can be achieved by regularly maintaining your HVAC systems. Regular maintenance is just as important for their HVAC system as it is for their vehicle.

Regular maintenance is something you shouldn't put off and this is especially true when you think about HVAC systems. An air conditioning system has several components that work together and, like most equipment, requires regular maintenance, as there are several things that can go wrong. Regular maintenance can help you save a significant amount of money, especially when it comes to air conditioning systems, as they have much longer operating time than a normal building system. While sometimes it may not seem necessary, preventive maintenance is better than having to repair a broken HVAC system.

Many manufacturers state in warranty documentation that installation and maintenance by an authorized HVAC service provider are part of the warranty conditions.