Your Heating and Cooling system is one of the best parts about RVing over tent camping. With every luxury, there is maintenance involved and your HVAC systems are no different. Maintaining your HVAC system is something you ought to look at on a bi-annual basis. Here are some things to look for.
Your air conditioner cover isn’t a decoration.
There is a real purpose to your air conditioner cover—besides making it look good. This cover is meant to protect the components underneath. But the sun, dirt, road debris, severe weather, and branches will give it a beat down over the years of owning your RV. It is important to keep an eye on it. Inspect it a couple times a year and make sure it isn’t cracked or becoming brittle.
Check for leaking around your seals.
This could go under roof maintenance, but keeping water out of your rig is always something to consider. A common place for leaks into your RV is around your air conditioners. This makes sense since your air conditioner pulls moisture from the air. Typically, this water runs off the side of your rig, but can get back inside if it isn’t sealed properly. If you have an air conditioner leak, you will need to replace the A/C gasket with a new one.
Check the other seals, screws and surrounding areas and reseal with tubes of the correct sealant.
Gently clean your system from debris build up.
There are parts inside of your unit that are incredibly delicate—condenser and evaporator fins. These can get bent overtime if you aren’t careful. They make combs to clean in between the fins and can sometimes be combed straight. With an AC fincomb and a mild soap, you would be able to keep this clean.
In addition, you will want to make sure your filters are clean. Depending on where you are or the season of the year, your filters do a lot of dirty work. These filters should be inspected and cleaned in your bi-annual maintenance. You can simply remove them and use a vacuum to get the initial debris. Then use warm water and mild soap to clean them and let them sit in the sun to dry.
You should be able to clean your filter several times before needing to replace them. You will know it is time to actually replace them when they are clearly too worn to properly be cleaned.
