As the warmer weather approaches (it’s coming, we promise!) it will be time to use your central air conditioner before you know it. Here are four simple things to check to make sure your AC unit is ready to do its best this season. A properly prepared and maintained AC unit lasts longer and saves you money.

1) If it wasn’t covered, check the inside of your AC unit. Look down through the grill to where the motor is and see if any debris is stuck down there or in the screen. With the ELECTRIC OFF to the condenser, take a garden hose and hose off the condenser fins that surround it to get any accumulated dust and debris off. For really dirty coils or fins, consider a professional cleaning and service that uses a specially formulated foaming cleanser to break down and remove the dirt. That is good to do every couple of years.

The disconnect on the condenser: flip the on/off breaker in the small gray box hanging right behind the AC unit on the outside wall to the off position OR grab the wire handle disconnect located in the box and pull it straight out towards you. After you are done hosing off the unit, flip the switch back to on or place the handle back in the box.

2) Check the furnace/air conditioner filter. Lots of people think the furnace filter is only used for heating during the winter but that’s not the case at all. It’s used for both your heat AND your air conditioning and a clogged filter makes the unit work much harder to get clean, cool air to you.

3) The first day it gets to 70 degrees, turn the unit on. Seems simple, but it’s a much better time to find out that your air conditioner has a problem early in the season and before it gets too hot. The last thing you want is to discover an issue on a 90-degree scorcher! Make sure the condensate tube is open (you should be able to see water running through it). The Condensate tube is a little tube about 3/4 of an inch that comes out of the A-coil at the top of the furnace and either goes into a drain or a pump. It’s a good practice to make sure water is running when your air conditioner is running. If it doesn’t come out of that tube it’s going to overflow and spill on top of the furnace where it could short out a circuit board.

4) Simplest of all, hold your hand over air vents throughout the house just to make sure cold air is coming out in all the rooms.

If your air conditioner hasn’t been professionally checked in last 5 years consider having an expert, like the trained staff at Wilbur Henry, come and put gauges on it to make sure the unit is working at 100%. Summers are getting so hot now that having gauges put on the air conditioner is a worthy investment. If the charge is low the air conditioning unit will just run and run and run and there goes your electric bill!

As it starts to get warmer and you turn on your air conditioner for the first time this season, what do you do if it doesn’t turn on? Follow these four east troubleshooting steps to possibly save an unnecessary service call for central air repair.

Step 1) Make a trip down into the basement and check your electrical panel. If the breaker is tripped the switch will be halfway between on and off and the window on the breaker will show red. Turn the switch to the off position and then back to the on position. If it trips again it means there is a dead short somewhere and you need to call for service. If the switch is in the on position but your air conditioner still isn’t working, head back upstairs.

Step 2) Make sure your thermostat is set on cool mode and that the temperature is set lower than the house temperature by at least two degrees. Still not working? Head out to the yard.

Step 3) If the air conditioning unit is blowing inside but not running outside, head outside to the condenser and check the disconnect box on the condenser. Some condensers have an on/off switch and some just have a kill switch to shut everything down totally for maintenance purposes. Turn the switch off and wait for a minute then turn it back on again.

Step 4) If after all that, your air conditioner still isn’t working, visually look at the cord coming out of the condenser. It should be a small brown cord with only two wires in it. See if the cord is broken or even chewed through by small critters. If the cord appears undamaged, it’s time to call for AC service. Wilbur Henry is happy to be there if you need us to stay cool this summer. Just contact us!