Air conditioning maintenance during the summer season

AccuWeather

Nicholas De Leon of Consumer Reports joins the AccuWeather Network to explain the importance of air conditioning efficiency and maintenance throughout the summer season when they're needed the most.

Transcript

00:00With summer temperatures running high over much of the country, your air conditioner is working

00:04over time. But is it working smart? Well, we're going to find out. Consumer Reports Senior Tech

00:09reporter Nicholas de Leon joins us with tips to stay cool and save money. Thanks for joining us

00:18here this morning on AccuWeather Early. Thank you for having me. All right, the locator is important.

00:24Tucson, Arizona. Yes. That's somewhere you need your air conditioning working well.

00:28How can I tell if my air conditioning is working efficiently and what should I even be checking?

00:35Yeah, well, there's a couple of things to keep in mind when using your air conditioner. The first

00:39tip we give folks is to make sure it's in the right place. Usually you want to put it in a

00:43north-facing window or otherwise shady window because direct sunlight will just make it a lot

00:49harder to cool a room effectively. Another tip that we give folks is if you've installed that

00:53kind of spray foam around there to keep the seal in. When you put the air conditioner in for the

00:58season, make sure that the foam is still intact because the UV from the sun can kind of break

01:03down the foam. You can also just use caulk to kind of clean up all the cracks or whatever.

01:09Another easy tip that we have for folks is to clean the filter regularly. You know, when you're

01:13putting the AC for the first time this season, just take the filter out. It's usually just in the

01:17front, running under some warm water, some soap, clean it. You should do that maybe every two months.

01:22If you have a central AC system, that's when you would want a licensed HVAC guy to come and do that.

01:28One thing we do advise folks to not use is the portable AC units. Those are the ones where the

01:34unit's on the floor and it kind of like accordions up to the window. Those are pretty noisy. They're not

01:40very efficient and they just use a lot of energy. So if you can, use the traditional AC window,

01:46AC air conditioner. The other thing is to, you know, use curtains, blackout, you know, I'm in

01:52Tucson, Arizona. It'll be about a hundred degrees today. It was about 115 last week, pretty much

01:57every day. So I've got blackout curtains here in this office to make sure it doesn't get too warm

02:01in here. But yeah, those are some general tips for folks. Obviously we test air conditioners all

02:07the time. Last I checked, we have like 75 different models in our ratings at consumerreports.org from all

02:13the big brands, LG, Black and Decker, Bridger, you name it, we've got it. So we've got all the

02:18information there. If you don't, if you want to get really in depth with this. And you mentioned

02:22some tips about some mistakes people make that hurt their AC's performance. People, a lot of folks

02:29will just kind of crank the AC all the way up to the max of the maximum cold. That's, that can be bad

02:34because all that's telling your AC to do is to try to hit an extraordinarily low number. And depending

02:39upon the outside temperature, it's just going to keep running and running and running until it hits

02:43that almost impossibly low number to hit. So what you want to do is really try to make,

02:48get a balance between the outside temperature and what you're comfortable inside. We find that around

02:5278 degrees, that's what I keep it in my house during the day, 78 degrees. That's, that's not as warm as

03:00it may sound, but it is, it's cool enough. We would also recommend to use ceiling fans. I think the

03:05department of energy has said that a ceiling fan can reduce the feel of a temperature by like four

03:10degrees. So maybe set your thermostat to 76 or whatever, and then let the ceiling fan take it

03:17from there. One thing I did forget to mention is to make sure that you've got an up-to-date

03:21thermostat. You know, nowadays I've got smart thermostats that that'll learn your patterns,

03:25learn when you're home, learn when you're not home, just to make sure that you're not wasting

03:29money cooling your house when it doesn't need to be cooled. Excellent. You answered a lot of our

03:34questions. All right. This one I think is a good one. Is it better to constantly run your AC,

03:38or if you spend a lot of time out of your house, is it better to turn it off and then, you know,

03:42turn it back on when you get home? What's your advice? The advice would be to get a smart thermostat,

03:47which will take all that guesswork out of it actually, just because it'll know, you know,

03:51if you're not home, it doesn't really make a ton of sense to cool the house to 70 degrees. So

03:56that's, that's smart thermostats is a smart investment nowadays. And when should I replace my AC

04:02or how long should a unit last? Let's talk about the indoor unit, the unit that you put in the

04:09window. Of course. Yeah. We generally recommend every eight to 10 years. So if it's been a while

04:14since you've got your last air conditioner, you may want to replace, but eight to 10 years is kind of

04:19what we recommend folks. All right. Consumer Reports senior tech reporter, Nicholas DeLeon. Thank

04:25you so much for joining us here on AccuEther Early and stay cool out there in Tucson.

04:29Thank you. Stay cool.

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