Cleaning York Air conditioner DIY

I never clean the air conditioner before but today I've tried it myself and learned quite a few thing about the York Air conditioner. Usually I used to call contractor to clean the air conditioner and pay around RM80 for the service including refilling the gas.

After some reading on the web and also one comment from the contractor that the air conditioner is not necessary to refill the gas too frequently. It's because the air conditioner has a mechanism that use a temperature difference to operate. As long as the mechanism work it does not need the gas to be refilled all the time maybe once in a year is okay.



Anyway i am not going too detail about this because i don't really know exactly how it works but from this experience i learned that cleaning the air conditioner yourself can be better than the contractor does. Usually the contractor just clean in outer such as the heat sink fin and also the filters which is fine. But there is one more most important thing that I never realized is the fan too need cleaning - until I checked and open it how dirty it is after years of using without service. The dirt become harden and  tough to remove.



The air conditioner fan is made from plastic arranged in cylinder. So over time it will contracted with dirt around the fan. As the dirt accumulate over time it create uneven hole along the arrangement of the small fan and that can cause the fan to produce noise. Watch this video



So in this cleaning process I used the following

1. Bucket of water (Small pale)
2. Cloth
3. Toothbrush
4. Philip screwdriver

Safety Gear

1. Safety glass
2. Mouth cover

Step 1: Open and remove the front filter cover by flipping it up and pull the hook holder. I was very careful in pulling the hook one by one since it is quite soft and fragile. After that remove the air filter and wash it with water. Apart from that I cleaned the heat sink fin as well using wet cloth and toothbrush to remove stuck dirt on the fin.



Step 2: Once that is done - using Philip screwdriver to remove the body cover screws. Then unseat the 3 clips at the top that hold the cover. Then remove the body cover. I guess that is all i need to do because anything more than that seems to be quite complicated. One more thing is to remove the air flow swing so that i can reach the fan inside. Another part that I have to be careful with because the swing flap is quite soft.







Step 3: Then use safety glass and mouth cover before proceeding as well as a cardboard. The cardboard is use to prevent dirt from splashing out everywhere during the cleaning process. Then take a toothbrush and wet in the water.

Step 4: Turn on the air conditioner and as the fan spin place the toothbrush on it. During this process i am using cardboard as guard to prevent the dirt splashing further distance. It's very nasty and dirty. Keep doing part by parts until eventually it looks quite cleaned. There is no way to make it 100% clean and the dirt are inside the fan cylinder cannot be reached by the toothbrush. But that is fine as long as the outer part is cleaned.



Step 5: Once it is cleaned put everything back in place.



After completed cleaning everything i come to realize it isn't so difficult to clean the air conditioner. It's just take my time and a little bit of effort. In fact I have cleaned the fan which the contractor never did before.