How To DEEP Clean Your AC Coils FOR FREE. Use This Secret Sauce

in this video we're going to show you how to determine if your AC condensing unit has two rows of coils or only one afterwards we're going to show you how to do a deep cleaning on your condensing unit regardless of if it has two rows or a single row so let's get right into it now before we remove the lid or work on any unit we want to make sure that we are shutting down the power first obviously the units that we're demonstrating this on are not connected to anything but let's show you real quick how to disconnect power to your unit so very simple each unit will probably have a disconnect like this all you do is pull this little Tab out set it on top just make sure you close this back because there's still live wiring and you don't want water getting in there all right so we've got two different types of AC systems here now the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to remove the lid of these units and this is the tool that I recommend for a homeowner you can easily strip these screws out so having a handheld tool like this is nice to have and you have all of these different different sizes with the Klein I'll leave a link for this in the video description but let's go ahead and remove the tops and we'll show you what's underneath so we got the lids loosened all the screws taken out we're going to rotate this over and we're just going to set it right down on the ground if your fan doesn't quite reach the ground you can set a block of wood or something underneath it so that it's not putting a bunch of tension on those wires foreign so as you can see this unit just has a single row of coils so we're going to show you how to effectively clean that as you can see they're super dirty and nasty and the bottom also has some junk collected there so we're going to show you how to do a really good nice cleaning on this unit now on this unit on the other hand as we can see there is two rows of coils here now we're going to show you what it looks like in between we're actually going to separate the coils for a homeowner I would not recommend doing this this is more so of a commercial thing where you will split the coils and clean in between but I've already split the coils on this one just so we can show you what it looks like and as you can see the coils are super clean we cleaned this unit in a previous video and there was nothing in here in in the middle to begin with to cause a restriction so I would not recommend um splitting the coils a lot of people in the comments said you have to do that if you have double coils that is not true however the biggest thing with this one as you can see these little aluminum fins this Linux unit has these little uh little tabs that hold it in place and to pull that out all you do is pull like that and it pulls it out from between these two tubes here so that's not going to cause any issues or anything these units tend to collect stuff so I'd probably recommend just leaving this one off and we're going to show you how to clean both of these thoroughly so let's go ahead and get the cover off of this one that's another thing that I recommend just remove the cover if you want to do a real deep cleaning because a lot of times stuff will get stuck between these fins as you're trying to clean this so I definitely recommend taking a few extra minutes taking the cover off and that's going to allow you to get full coverage on this coil with your cleaner wow wow that's crazy this would have made a huge difference in the performance of this unit obviously this system got replaced and probably it could be because of this that the compressor went out um so make sure you maintain your units guys you can get so many more years of use if you simply maintain the system you don't even necessarily have to use the cleaner but just rinsing this will get a lot of this off and can prevent you from having to replace your unit prematurely okay so now that you've determined whether you have a double coil or a single the cleaning process is actually going to be the same regardless we're not going to split these but we are going to clean the inside and the outside and then we're going to rinse from the inside and then we're going to rinse the outside now as far as cleaning solutions this is what I like to use when I'm cleaning condensing units and maintaining them in the field but I do this on a daily basis and so I use this quite often but if you're a homeowner and you're looking for something that is cheap and yet effective we can actually use Dawn dish liquid as well as vinegar to get the same results we'll have a nice cleaning agent and we can get get all this nasty debris off of our condensing unit now we're still going to use our foam gun this one is a coil gun made by new Calgon but I will leave a link in the video description to a 20 coil gun and I'll show you right now how we mix the vinegar and Dawn dish liquid in our coil gun and then let's get to cleaning this unit so we got our coil gun container we're just gonna put in a little bit of dish liquid and then we're gonna put in a little bit of white vinegar and then we'll do the rest with lukewarm water probably don't have to fill this to do one unit so maybe about halfway full and that's it all right so we've got our coil gun hooked up we're set to e you can adjust these depending on the ratio you want and we're just going to start rinsing it down and then we're just going to let that soak for a little bit and then we'll go ahead and rinse it all off so our unit's been sitting for about 10 minutes or so now what we're going to do is we're going to start rinsing this from the inside and you'll notice it pushing this debris out so instead of trapping stuff inside here we're pushing it back out the way that it came in to begin with foreign that stuff's pretty stubborn but here's another trick you can do is get a stiff bristle brush like this one and what we can do is just run this through the coil and that's going to clear all that stuff out in addition if you have some bent fins like this sometimes that will straighten them out and allow it to have better airflow now another thing that you can do in addition to rinsing this out a lot of stuff will get trapped in here you can go ahead and vacuum this out with a shop vac but what else you can do is you can drill a larger hole at the bottom of the pan or even several that all of this can be rinsed out easier in the future that's not going to hurt the unit and it's going to help in the long run maintaining this unit foreign now keeping the bottom of the pan is important because as you can see some Rust has developed on the bottom of this pan when the leaves develop on the bottom they will hold moisture and that can rust out the bottom of the pan so keeping this cleaned and rinsed out regularly is definitely important all right for the unit that has the double coils we're going to do the same thing we're going to rinse the inside with our coil cleaner and then we'll do the outside so it's been about 10 minutes we're going to go ahead and rinse this from the inside now for the inside portion we want to kind of press down instead of straight out because we're not gonna we don't want to push the dirt back into the middle section of these two coils okay so let's go on to the outside now do the same thing we're just going to work our way down now as you can see without that cover we're able to get all of this debris and stuff out as we get here towards the bottom you'll notice that some of this stuff just wants to stay so we're just going to take our brush and we're going to work it down like this so you can use that comb as needed to get any stubborn debris like that out so if you notice here in addition to not being able to get some of this debris out right here we have some bent fins now notice what we can do we can put some pressure on this foreign fins bent back out believe it or not if you have a lot of fins like this that can really mess with your efficiency and so using this tool can really help get Fuller air out of your AC well guys it's as simple as that to keep your AC unit clean and maintained whether you have a double coil or a single coil like this one using these two household cleaners this coil gun as well as these two tools will leave a link to these in the video description but you can get all of these items for very cheap and you can save hundreds doing this project yourself now something that's equally as important as keeping these coils cleaned is your evaporator coil in the next video right here we're going to share with you how to easily clean your evaporator coil making sure that the inside unit has plenty of air coming out of the vents keeping you nice and cool this summer until next time you guys be safe later

Channel: The DIY HVAC Guy

Views: 843,805

Keywords: how to clean ac coils, air conditioner, air conditioning, cleaning air conditioner coils, central air, how to clean ac, how to, how to clean an air conditioner, do it yourself, how to clean air conditioner coils, coil cleaner, air conditioner cleaning, evaporator coil, ac coil, ac capacitor, clean ac, how to clean ac unit, ac unit, ac coils, how to clean condenser coil on ac, dirty condenser, how to clean your ac coils, dirty condenser coil, diy hvac guy, anti diy

Id: E_JNZ_EdWQ4

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023