It can be helpful to think of the long North Texas summer as a marathon with your AC as the runner. You want to go into it with the best possible physicality. Throughout the race, you’ll want to maintain your performance through hydration, energy boosts, and rest as needed. And don’t forget to stop and patch up in the event of injury along the way.
You need to maintain home equipment in the same way if you expect it to last, yet most people more or less ignore their AC systems unless they’re not working. While we recommend having your AC professionally serviced once a year, there are several things you should be doing yourself to keep things running well across the summer.
Keep Vents Clean
If you’re not super familiar with your AC system, there are generally three types of vents in your house: supply, return, and exhaust. The large vent you see on the left is a return vent. Air goes into the return vents to the AC for cooling, then the cool air goes back out to the house through the supply vents. The exhaust vent is where the really, really tired air goes. Kidding, but it’s sort of true: stale air in your attic or other ventilation spaces exits your home through exhaust vents.
On the right, you can see a close-up of this return vent. See all the dust and debris accumulated on the vent fins and inside the duct? You can unscrew the vent cover, clean and disinfect it, and use a duster to remove the dust and debris inside as far back as you can reach. This clears the path and keeps all that crap from reaching the filter, blocking the ducts, and/or getting in the air you’re breathing…