Make The Most Of Your Window Air Conditioner Units

There are a few ways that you can stay cool in the summer. If you are lucky, you have a home that does not get too hot, or you have central air conditioning that you do not have to give much thought to. If not, you have a few more options, one of which would be window air conditioner units. You may find that a fan cools your home just fine, but these only work so well. Air conditioners for the windows are still popular and they work better than ever. However, there are a few things that you can do to get the most out of them without running up your electric bill too high.

Before thinking about the best ways to run your window air conditioning units, you should understand how they work. You may think that they pull air in from outside, cool it, and then push it inside. This is is only partially right. More precisely, they take the air from the room, 'condition' it, and then push that air back into the room. It is almost like sucking the hot out of the air. The Freon in the unit helps to cool the cleaned air out so that it comes out much cooler than when it went in.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make with window air conditioner units is having it run too much and work too hard. These are usually made specifically for a particular amount of space usually this space is in square feet. If you try to run them for bigger areas, they are going to work too hard to cool that space and they are not going to be effective no matter how hard they work. Keep the room closed off while the air conditioner is working and then turn it off when you are not going to use that room for a while. That saves money and also prolongs the life of your air conditioner.

All window air conditioner units work in the same basic way, but they are all built slightly different. Some are older but still work, and some are so new they do not have the same parts as their predecessors. If your air conditioning unit has filters, you have to pay attention to these. Most of them do, but some are harder to manage than others. Those that get stuffed up will not cool the room like they should. That means your unit will run and run, but it will not offer you much in the way of relief. Change the filters as recommended or when they seem to be clogging up. Some may even freeze over, signifying a bigger problem that you may not be able to fix on your own.

You may not have to worry as much about maintenance on newer window air conditioner units, but you should keep an eye on them. Do not run them all the time, make sure the room is small enough to be cooled by the unit you bought, and give them a once over a few times a year to be sure they are working well and there are no electrical problems that may cause a fire. If you want to cool a bigger space, you have to close off one area and then buy another unit. If you try too big of an area, even the best window air conditioner units will burn out early.