[LIFE] How To Maintain Your Air Conditioner

One of my friends told me that her air conditioner didn't produce enough cool wind, so I asked her if she had cleaned it up.

Yes, air conditioners need cleaning. And the first thing you should check when you have problem with your air condoner is if it's cleaned or not.

There are various models and the latest ones don't require cleaning but they do it by themselves.

 For example, this is one of our air conditioner. It's  a DAIKIN 2012 model and they don't require cleaning often. It automatically cleans the dust or dries up inside if we set it (Yes, we must set it using a remote).

フィルター掃除: Filter Cleaning
内部クリーン: Inside Cleaning (reduce molds and bad smell by drying)
The spec guide advises that "Filter Cleaning" should be done everyday.

 When I open the front panel, it looks like this. If they need cleaning (the streamer unit, the dust box and the dust brush), they let us know by blinking each lamp.

 This is another one which is rather old (Mitsubishi).

 We can see the filters and they need to be cleaned once a month using a vacuum cleaner. These filters are removable, so please get them off and vacuum.

If they're really dirty/oily, you can prepare a warm water with some drops of neutral detergent in a bucket soak, rinse and dry.
CAUTION: Please don't put back the wet filters to the air conditioner!

Inside, we can see it's dirty but can't reach... in this case, we need to call the professional...

Air conditioner cleaning (エアコンクリーニング）costs about 8000~12000yen per machine. Discount available for the second and more machines at the same time. The easiest way is to ask 家電量販店 household electrical appliance retailer such as Yodobashi, Bic, Kojima, Yamada etc... where you bought the conditioner (if possible).  The leading house cleaning company Duskin also offers air conditioner cleaning.

*Please note that these are just two examples. There are various models and each of them has different way of maintaining... Please have someone to translate the specification guide of your air conditioner.

After the earthquake, we are asked to save electricity. The government recommend that we set the temperature of air conditioner to 28 degrees C or use an electric fan (or a circulator) if possible. And switching off the air conditioner often doesn't save electricity, because it uses a lot of energy to boot. But we should keep the room temperature at about 28 C for our health!!

Here I embed the Electricity Usage Status gadget by TEPCO.