Four Things You Will Want To Know About The Maintenance Of An Evaporative Cooler

If you live in a warm, dry climate, an evaporative cooler may be the most affordable and efficient air conditioning solution for your home. These are cooling systems that work with the evaporation of water. They also require more maintenance than a conventional air conditioner.  You may want to do some of these chores yourself. If you want to keep your evaporative cooler efficiently cooling your home, here are four things that you will want to know about the maintenance needs of evaporative cooling systems:

1. Preparing For The Cooling Season With Routine Maintenance

Before you start your cooler, you will need to do the annual maintenance. This includes removing the cover, checking the parts and changing the filter. Over the winter, things like pipes and small parts can become damaged. You will want to start your system and look for any leaks that need to be repaired.  In addition, move any moving parts to make sure they are not fused in place due to mineral deposits.

2. Checking The Water Levels To Ensure Your Cooler Does Not Go Dry

Throughout the cooling season, you will need to check the water levels in the reservoir. If you have to add water manually, you will need to do this regularly. For evaporative coolers with central HVAC, low water can be a sign of other problems such as clogged lines or bad float valves.  If the float valve is stuck, try moving it up and down until it floats in the water and moves freely. Clogged lines can sometimes be cleaned, but may need to be replaced if they have too much debris in them.

3. Removing Mineral Build Up From Parts Due To Hard Water

Mineral build up can be a major problem with evaporative coolers. It can cause parts to fail and your cooler to not work. To clean these parts, you can use a descaling solution to spray and scrub the parts to get all the mineral deposits off. After you have cleaned the parts, you can add grease to any moving parts to ensure that they move freely.

4. Changing The Filter Medium Or Cleaning To Ensure Efficient Cooling

Another thing that you may need to do often is change the filter medium. This will need to be done when air does not flow through the wet filter freely. There are also filters that can be cleaned, but if you have hard water, you will also want to descale them when you do your regular maintenance to your cooler. After doing this, make sure to thoroughly rinse them so there is no descaling solution left on the filter because it can be corrosive to the filter and metal parts in your system.

These are some of the things that you will need to do for the regular maintenance of your evaporative cooler. If you need help with the installation, repairs or maintenance of an evaporative cooler, contact an HVAC contractor like Winters Heating Cooling & Indoor Air Quality and ask them about some improvements that can be done to make your air conditioning more efficient.