How to Install a Window AC Air Conditioner Unit

I made a video recently on how to take apart and completely clean an AC unit if you haven't seen it check it out I'll leave a link in the description to it and in that video I asked if you wanted to see me install one of these I got a bunch of yeses and that's what we're gonna do right now so to start get your AC out of your basement or your garage or wherever it is and get it close to the window that you want to put it in if you don't think you're strong enough to be able to do this on your own don't feel bad about getting somebody to help you because some of these units can be super heavy if it's your if the first time installing the AC and it's brand new you might have to put these these things on on the side so pretty easy they come like this you stretch this out I don't know why this foam is in here I think somebody else did that don't worry about that don't do that though stretch that out and then just line that up down there and then you put these pieces in top and bottom and it's your adjustable baffle that locks the air from the outside so if it was your first time you probably have to put this rail on too which is just a couple screws on the top put that on first and then move this on we're ready to put this in like I said if you need a friend to help yet feel free to and when you grab this on the back don't grab it like this because these can be super sharp and if you slide with all this weight you could slice your fingers open so try and grab on the metal right here if you're gonna grab it from the back and the bottom is probably a good idea to so I'm gonna start with opening my window all the way and then the screen all the way this is pretty dirty I should clean that at some point next year so this is a new vinyl replacement window it's pretty strong pretty durable if you have wooden windows they would be fine too it just depends on your setup like here I'm gonna set my AC right on this piece here you might have to cut a board to fit in here to have the AC sit on if this isn't too strong or if you're worried about warping this also you might have a screen on the outside on older houses some and depending on the type of house the screens can come up further than this in which case you would have to put a piece of wood right here to lift it up past this because you don't want your AC pointing in and that's a big pro tip right there is you never want your AC to point towards the inside of your house you want it diving down just a little bit towards the outside because this creates a bunch of water and you want it to drain outside and not into your house so assuming that you got all this set up you might want to do a piece of foam here that's up to you I'm not too worried about it so I'm gonna grab it like this to start in the bottom and make sure my chords out of the way sit right here probably mentioned before you even attempt this to measure the window to make sure the AC is gonna fit if you have a smaller window I'm just gonna sneak it in and hold right here and now I can look and see how this is set up down here so I'm gonna have to lift the AC unit up and get it over this piece here okay so some AC is what you might have to do is set these baffles up first you should be able to just sit the AC right down on this and then slide your baffles out but I'm gonna set my baffles so that they're tight to this on both sides this and now I'm gonna just push this out a little bit and let it fall right into place if you look at this side that sides good again I'm gonna eyeball this and I can definitely tell that it's facing downhill so that's good just always keep pressure on this now I like to pull the screen down and just set it on there and then the window sash this is called your window sash you can see I already have holes in the sash I use two different ACS at one point so what I like to do is bring the sash down and then see where the middle hole is and I just like to line this up so I can put the screws in the same place so I'm just gonna push this over a little bit too much there we go and then we'll line up and then these ones line up okay I'm ready to install my screws at this point the AC is not gonna go anywhere because you have your window sash down like this so and I have my screws I don't want to put too long of screws in here I don't want to go out the other side and actually I have two different size screws about an inch and then these ones are about an inch and a quarter just measure your sash if you don't have smaller screws I just like to use big ones because they help in case any not honest people want to get into the house then attach that if you wanted to at the top of your window sash you could put a bracket right here to hold this down securely or you could put a piece of wood from here to the top to stop that window sash from going up if you were worried about that but back down here you just put my screws in okay I'll just check around and see if there's any any light showing if there's any light showing you can get some small pieces of foam similar to what somebody has tucked in here and just seal it up and that's it now you just take your cord plug it in good to go now here's an example of an AC I have set up in an older window in a wooden sash and every window is gonna be different I mean for the most part they're the same but for instance this one doesn't have any track on on this side I don't know what happened they just took it off maybe when they did the redid the room with the paneling and stuff and there's no track here so I actually had to secure it with screws to the side here so the sash wouldn't just bounce out this way but what you will have with windows like this is if you look up here in between the sashes there's nothing stopping air flow and you know insects bees you know they could make a nest in here and they could come into your house potentially from up here so one thing to keep in mind on the vinyl windows the newer windows they have a seal that seals against the two window sashes but on older windows you might have the gap here that you're going to want to fill in with either those the black foam pieces or some type of insulation you could even use if you had to an old towel or something just a block I would be more worried about blocking insects and rodents than anything else so just keep an eye on that a little tip for you so when the summer's over unfortunately you got to take this out so I'm going to show you how to take it out but it's gonna be a different AC that I'm taking out but the process is gonna be the same we just filmed this video a little backwards so here we go first of course unplug it we're gonna take whichever screws you put in take those out and I'm not worried about holding the sash yet the window shouldn't move at all don't lose those screws in the next year put a little pressure down on the AC and make sure I can move it make sure it's broken free from this cuz sometimes it sticks especially if you used any kind of foam here or on the bottom and lift this up now I got it like this nice and secure and again if you don't think you're strong enough have another person help you out lift the screen up slide these in a little bit if you can then you can grab it and I have a towel on the floor and the reason for that is because when this runs a lot of that water just sits in the bottom of the AC and it doesn't all drain out so more than likely there's gonna be water in here in fact if you wanted to the unit was light enough you can let it drain out here the AC down move remove all your pieces that you used if you use the piece of wood here or you just phone and it should be there you go and just a quick little tip take your hardware whatever you use to mount the AC and you can just tape it to the top here so you don't lose it and you can do the same thing with any of your foam pieces you can tape it to the back here if you can reuse them and that's pretty much it I hope this helped out and if you want to see some of my other content you can click here and here --is-- and we'll see you next time thanks for watching

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 306,792

Keywords: Home, home owner, diy, how to, do it yourself, easy, house, ac install, window ac, window ac install, installing a window ac unit, Installing a Window Air Conditioning Unit - How to (DIY), window ac unit install, air conditioner, ac, a/c, home improvement, window air conditioner, step by step, air conditioning, how to install a window air conditioner

Id: Utn4Foa7aOc

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020