I noticed something when cleaning my air conditioner

This is really interesting - I have two mini splits and I never noticed that they do this. I assume they do, because I just did a full cleaning on them for the first time ever last year and they barely had any dirt on the heat exchangers. I run mine almost exclusively in the summer (it's still cheaper to heat with oil, which is common here in New England) so there's plenty of crap that would otherwise be caught in the coils.

Circuitmike

I wonder if the dirt that the reverse flush throws out of the pioneer gets sucked in by the Lennox. However the occasional frost build up might flush it off when it melts in the reverse cycle.

Jim Hewlett

We have a pioneer 18k minisplit cooling our computer room, and it does the same thing. It will stop and reverse the fan for about a minute once every 24 hours in continuous use, and when I have to clean the coils of our chillers from the 400 pounds of pollen every couple of weeks, the minisplit looks at me and says "bitch please". I give it a quick rinse with a water hose and it's cool.

Brad Wilmot

"They are just much smaller and don't require that huge frontal area to scrub off more than 60% of the engine's energy as waste heat." Just FYI, radiators in cars dissipate around 10% of the total heat energy produced (or around 30% of the nominal mechanical horse powers). Most of the heat goes into the exhaust pipe.

Aleksei Besogonov

Cleaning out ones AC unit makes sense, but nobody I've ever known has ever said anything about doing it. I would be curious (certainly a Connextras topic) in more details of good ways to clean out an AC unit. I would trust you more than some rando person on Youtube, where bogus information is posted at least 70% as much as legit info. I'm assuming it's more than just taking a garden hose and spraying it down.

Don Eitner

Great discussion. I was thinking about this the other day, watching a video about home maintenance on a Heat Pump Water Heater, and realizing that there would be one more task to procrastinate on and feel bad about - annual cleaning of the cooling coils. And this will only proliferate as we shift more and appliances to heat moving capabilities instead of heat making (with methane or other fossil fuels). Even in EVs there are multiple cooling coils abounding - most people think a EV doesn't have a grill because it doesn't have a radiator - but it does, often several. They are just much smaller and don't require that huge frontal area to scrub off more than 60% of the engine's energy as waste heat. But all these cooling coils all over the place are going to either need to be cleaned regularly, or incorporate self-cleaning, like you have found here - or maybe improved heat transfer mechanisms that will not require as many tiny orifices that can get clogged up. Great discussion!!!!!