01 October 2011

Preparing Your Air-Conditioner for Winter






Winter and preparing for winter -- the two seasons in Minnesota and other northern climes. In fairness, you could also go with winter and road construction, but this is a blog about homes, not roads, so there you go.


An important place to start is understanding that air conditioners are meant to be outside and are designed to do that with very little winterizing needed.

I've noticed that many homeowners feel compelled to wrap their air conditioner for the winter months -- something like a swaddling baby -- and some just don't want to hear about how that could cause some bad things to happen.

What bad things, you ask. Well wrapping your air conditioner cause a pocket of air to be trapped around the unit which causes humidity to stay in the unit and this causes the electrical components to corrode and fail.

If you are still feeling resistance to leaving the air conditioner uncovered, you may be thinking about all the rodents that you wanted to house over the winter. They love the protected space and will make some fantastic rodent housing and as an added bonus, they may even eat through the wiring inside your air conditioner.

Do you have additional tips? Share them in the comments.