Don’t Fly too close to the Sun: Tips for Careful AC Care

Have you heard the story of Icarus from Greek mythology?

In order to escape a dangerous island, Icarus’s father made him some wings out of wax and feathers.

Icarus was warned to not fly too close to the sun, but did it anyway… typical teenager 😉 The sun melted his wings, and he fell into the sea.

So what does Greek mythology have to do with AC maintenance?

Well, not everything is as tough as nails- especially on your AC unit. That’s what makes caring for your AC tricky. If you do too much you might break something, but you obviously don’t want to pay us to trim the grass around your unit.

So you need to be extremely careful. Otherwise you’ll end up like Icarus, flying too close to the sun. So we’ll start with the basics- cleaning your AC unit.

How To Clean Your AC Unit Without Hurting It

When it comes to cleaning your outside AC unit, you’ll see all sorts of stuff on YouTube about what you “Should Do.” People use everything from butter knives to pressure washers to clean out their outdoor AC unit. 

These are good examples of “flying too close to the sun” because there is a HUGE risk of bending the metal ‘fins’ on your unit.  

These fins (the wavy part of your AC unit) are really important because if too many of them get bent, then your AC unit will have trouble cooling down the freon that cools your house. This means that it will be working more, and cooling less.

So the way to clean your unit (without damaging it) is to use your garden hose to spray between the fins. Do this every couple of months, and you should be good to go. 

If you notice that this isn’t cleaning out everything, then you’ll want to give us a call at (801) 224-8899 and we can come out with our specialized cleaning kit to get it squeaky clean for you.

“What if my fins are already bent?”

You want to use a Fin Tool.This is a picture of one from Home Depot’s website for $8.  What you want to do is insert it between the fins and carefully comb the fins back.

Just, PLEASE be sure to check that it is the right size. Last thing you want to do is make it worse by using something with more or less fins per inch than your AC unit.

Hope this helped, and as always, if you’re feeling uncomfortable about ANY part of your AC maintenance, call us at (801) 224-8899 and we’d be happy to help.

Spencer (Customer Care)

~Western Heating + Air~