Much Needed Air Conditioner Cleaning

I’ve never thought of cleaning my air conditioner before, I don’t know why. But after catching a peek into my unit, I decided to clean it, thinking it would probably lead to sickness down the line. I say this because it was genuinely disgusting. Here’s a before photo:

Sorry you had to see this

To make up for it, here’s a photo of a stray cat

Hope this guy makes you feel better

First things first, I had to buy some items. I went to the nearest drugstore and bought myself a couple of things:

A bottle of aircon spray

And a wet wiper set

I would have done a product review of both of these but I forgot how much they cost and honestly don’t really know how I would review them past “it clean good.”

The first actual cleaning step was to unplug it from its outlet and open up the front of the unit. Perhaps I should have dusted this more while I was living here, but I pinned my hopes on the spray.

The opened unit

I held the trigger on the spray bottle, moving it around and trying to apply an even coat of the spray through all parts of the fins but trying not to get the liquid on any electronic parts. My finger kept the stream going for about twenty to thirty seconds as I moved the nozzle throughout the fin area. The bottle said something about 90-120 seconds, but I think it was referring to how much liquid was in one bottle.

I would have thought the camera could see the spray but I guess not

Then, I opened up the wet wiper set and assembled it. This was to get all that black mould out of the inside of the air conditioner. It took a bit of elbow grease and finessing, but I managed to wipe off most of the mould. The wet sheet that came out after wiping it all was disturbingly dark, but I felt I got the mould mostly out of there.

I tried my best to get everything out

Here’s an after photo.

Significantly cleaner than before, I think

I think I’ll be doing this semi-regularly from now on. So that leads me to the question:

How often do you clean your air conditioners?