Now that daylight saving is finally over and the autumn leaves are in full colour, it’s time to do the winter shut down for your evaporative air conditioner. If you don’t, you could shorten the life of the unit and spend more on heating than you need to.
Evaporative Air Conditioner Stagnant Pool
What you really shouldn’t do is just leave the air conditioner exposed to the elements with its reservoir full of water all winter and right through the spring. That’s the way to encourage bacterial growth in a pool of stagnant water. So what should you do?
A Chink in Your Insulation
Don’t leave the evaporative cooler on the roof uncovered or leave the vents in the ceiling open. If you do, some of that lovely heat that you’re paying for during the winter is going to rise to the ceiling and keep rising through the open vents. You wouldn’t leave a window open when it’s freezing cold, so make sure the vents are closed. Leaving them open with an uncovered unit letting the cold in will definitely help bring the temperature right down overnight. It can be a real chink in your insulation.
Bath before Bed
Evaporative air conditioners have a tap to supply the water that keeps the pads wet to cool the air. Turn it off. The winter shut down is a great opportunity to give the unit a good clean. The water in the reservoir should be drained and the reservoir cleaned with soapy water to get rid of all the muck. Give it a good flush and dry it out. All the cooling pads can be removed and given a good clean before putting them back.
Before you put on the cover (if you have one) remember that, like having the water on, it has power on too. Turn the power off.
Evaporative Cooler Hibernation
If you do all of this your evaporative air conditioner will be nicely primed and ready for another summer. The drawback is that doing all of this requires getting up a ladder and clambering around on the roof. If this is just too much or too dangerous, Metropolitan Air Conditioning can do it for you. As part of our winter shut down service, we can check that everything is clean and in order, such as the pump and filter. It is, after all, what we do. We are the air conditioning experts. Contact us before it gets really cold and put your evaporative cooler into hibernation ready to wake up nice and fresh when you need it.
