Cleaning Your Air Conditioning System & Why It Needs To Be Done

Heating and Air Conditioning systems do several things to the air in your home or office:

  • Cooling
  • Heating
  • Drying
  • Cleaning

When your system is performing the first two items on that list it is easy to notice when it isn’t working. The third, drying the air, is not quite as easy to perceive.

The last item, cleaning, takes effort to discover. Cleaning your comfort system is an important step in ensuring the overall efficiency of the system as well as the cleanliness of the air inside your home.

You might notice dirt around the ceiling registers or dust on tabletops and furniture. Maybe you have thought about having your ductwork cleaned.

Generally, of all the dirt and mold to be found in an air conditioning system about 5% by weight (if any) is found in the ductwork. The lions share is found in the air handler or furnace, in the cooling coil and the blower wheel. Click here to read about how we clean indoor coils.

coil cleaning with brush cleaning your air conditioner

Here is a coil after we took a swipe from the face with a wirebrush

coil cleaning brush

Here’s the wirebrush

Why it's important to clean coils

Cleaning the blower wheel is a task that has been designed into most blower systems. It is a nut and bolt removal to the outside for cleaning and re installation.

This is not the case with the indoor coil. Up until we built our ‘gadget’ cleaning the indoor coil adequately required:

  • removal of the refrigerant from the system
  • cutting of the refrigerant piping
  • removal of the coil to the outside for cleaning
  • re installation
  • nitrogen purging
  • brazing
  • evacuation
  • restart.

Our fee for this job was in the $500-600 range. It is akin to surgery on an air conditioner.

But not any more. We built a machine that we have used for about 10 years that allows our technicians to clean your indoor coil while it is in place in the air handler. No opening of the refrigerant system and it takes half the time. So it’s cheaper, too.

Because of the high cost of the old way, many customers would just live with the dirt, reduced performance and higher utility costs. In the past 10 years we have saved our customers thousands of dollars with our gadget and given them a clean-as-new coil.

Give us call if you have been told that your coil is dirty and needs cleaning or replacement. Heat pump air handlers start at about $380 for coil and blower, slightly higher for gas furnaces and attics.

If you’re unsure about anything regarding cleaning your air conditioning system, feel free to contact us! We will be able to help, as well as identify any problems before they get out of hand. 

Give us a call at 251-990-0998 or click the button below to schedule an appointment.