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Cleaning air conditioning filters: how and why?
The air conditioning is a ‘household appliance’ that has gone from being something exclusive present in some shops and homes to becoming an everyday and widespread appliance. This evolution has been mainly due to the fall in prices of current air conditioning equipment, thanks in part to the proliferation of many brands and options on the market, as well as the evolution in manufacturing technology and the massification of this.
But although an air conditioner is included in the white goods line, it has its peculiarities that almost no other has, since an air conditioner needs or requires at least a minimum of maintenance to achieve optimal performance of operation.
What maintenance does my air conditioner need?
The necessary maintenance of our split or ducted air conditioning equipment starts, of course, by performing a good cleaning of the air conditioning, whether it is a split equipment, ducts or an industrial type. It will be necessary to carry out a good cleaning of filters, of heat and cold exchangers and cleaning of the interior fan since these, on having become dirty and obstructed, prevent a correct exchange of cold or heat from taking place both in the interior unit and in the exterior unit, considerably lowering its performance and even making it completely null, in many cases increasing the electrical consumption, forcing its operation and reducing its useful life.
It should also be remembered that on many occasions cleaning the filters will not solve the problem of bad odour, since this problem will require disinfection, both of the filters and of the indoor unit.
I’m sure you’ll be interested: How to disinfect the air conditioning
Understanding this, let’s see how and what we need to clean in our air conditioning.
How to clean air conditioning filters
The first and foremost thing to clean in any air conditioning unit will be the air filters. These filters, generally made of nylon and with a multitude of variations in their composition and nomenclature –titanium, platinum, green tea, wasabi, etc.- are the first and main protective barrier that air conditioning equipment has to keep ‘in good shape’, cleaning, filtering and trapping most of the particles in suspension in the air, so cleaning the air conditioning and its filters will help us not only to have a better quality of air, but also to reduce consumption and increase the life of our equipment.
Filter of a ducted air conditioner completely clogged by dirt, making the unit unheatable in the absence of air flow.
Cleaning split air conditioning filters
As cleaning the filters of a split air conditioner is a very simple task, it is enough to disassemble the filters and rinse them with warm water, rubbing them slightly with our hands to remove the most resistant dirt and using if necessary some kind of soft soap, such as hand soap.
To clean the filters of an air conditioner we should never use abrasive products, as we can damage the materials they are made of, making them unusable. It is not advisable to use hard bristle brushes either, to avoid the possibility of ‘fraying’ the fabric, producing holes and reducing the filtering capacity.
Once cleaned, it will be convenient to let them dry before putting them back in our air conditioner.
How to clean the duct air conditioning filter
In duct air conditioning units, the filters are in the back of the unit. Generally, ducted units are installed on the bathroom ceiling and the air supply -where the air is supplied to our home- will be facing the door and closer to it, leaving the return area, where the air conditioning filter is located, at the farthest point.
To disassemble this filter we must lift a part of the plaster ceiling and remove it from the unit, then proceed to clean it and do this in the same way as with the split air conditioning units.
Some duct air conditioning units have filters that are not made of nylon and are not washable, so we must replace the filter with a new one.
If after cleaning the air conditioning filters you notice that your equipment is still not working properly, you can see other possible causes of this malfunction in these links:
If you require more thorough cleaning and disinfection of air conditioning filters, learn how to do it easily.
Where is the air conditioning filter and how to get it out?
Finding out where the air conditioning filter is and removing it is quite simple. If you have a split air conditioning unit, inverter or not, these filters are in the front of the same indoor equipment, so you just have to lift the front of it carefully to locate the filters.
In duct air conditioning units locating these filters is somewhat more complicated, but at the same time it is easy. To do this we will have to access the interior unit of our machine and see the back of it – usually this back part or “return” where the unit sucks in the air, it will not be embouched and will be free. So to locate the filter we will only have to look at the back of the unit, once located we must remove this filter, make a cleaning and put it back in place.
Air conditioning duct cleaning?
The question of whether air conditioning ducts need to be cleaned is quite common. To put your mind at ease, I would like to tell you that very rarely are the ducts of a domestic air conditioner cleaned, because in a house it is very difficult for this work to be necessary, since the current ducts are made of double aluminium sheet, both on the inside and outside, and they are difficult to get too dirty.
In industrial facilities this cleaning of ducts if they are more common and are made in different ways either sheet metal ducts or manufactured with fiberglass, using cleaning robots or throwing rubber balls inside them to release the dirt, among other methods.