I am not the original owner of the home, so perhaps the previous owner had caused damage to the a/c unit.
I have been planning a week-long vacation for several months now. My job can be quite stressful at times, so I decided that what I really needed was a ‘staycation’, meaning that I would use my vacation time to stay home, relax, and tend to my to-do list. Unfortunately, cleaning and cleaning out were at the top of my list. My air conditioner unit was one of the items that desperately needed to be cleaned. A year’s worth of dirt and debris had clogged the cooling fins, and I know that this was affecting my air conditioner’s efficiency. I turned off the power to the air conditioner, attached an extension cord to my vacuum cleaner, then dragged it outside to the outside unit. I unscrewed and removed the metal box covering the fins, then – with the soft brush attachment to my vacuum cleaner – I carefully vacuumed each of the a/c fins. There was an incredible amount of debris to be cleaned off, since the central fan sucks the outside air through the fins. In fact, I had to remove a lot of dead leaves from the fins before vacuuming them. I noticed that some of the fins were slightly bent, which is no surprise since they look so fragile. I am not the original owner of the home, so perhaps the previous owner had caused damage to the a/c unit. I figured that I could re-straighten some of the fins with a blunt dinner knife. Unfortunately, as I worked my way around the unit, I found even more bent fins. I decided at that point to call an HVAC professional to do the repair. I had too many other things to get done on my staycation!