In this episode of Home and Life Comfort, Derek Cole and a technician walk through a detailed, step‑by‑step demonstration of how to clean the outdoor coil of a residential air‑conditioning unit. The conversation begins with a strong safety emphasis—verifying power is truly off with a disconnect and a multimeter, wearing gloves and safety glasses, and protecting wiring when the unit lid is removed. They explain how to identify whether an AC has a single or dual‑row coil configuration and why cleaning only the outer row leaves the inner coils dirty, reducing efficiency. The hosts then describe disassembly: removing the top screws (using a 5/16‑inch driver), taking off the front grate, and carefully lifting the lid without stressing the fan or conduit. Inside, they vacuum the drain pan and clear debris, noting common contaminants like leaves, insects, and even dead frogs. For cleaning, they recommend a concentrated coil cleaner mixed with water, applied with a garden‑sprayer (not a high‑pressure washer) to avoid bending fins, and sprayed side‑to‑side across each coil side. After a 5‑8 minute dwell, the coils are rinsed with a low‑pressure garden sprayer, followed by a higher‑pressure rinse of the pan to remove residual suds. The unit is reassembled, screws hand‑tightened (avoiding impact tools), power restored, and the visible improvement in coil cleanliness is highlighted. Throughout, Derek stresses that while DIY cleaning is possible and can save short‑term money, a professional tune‑up is advisable for safety, thoroughness, and long‑term efficiency, especially given his 25‑year experience. The episode references a popular YouTube video with 5.5 million views that demonstrates the process.
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Home and Life Comfort with Derek Cole. You want something like that that is not a power washer, not a full stream where you can bend the fins, but it gives you enough soaking coverage area to make a difference. This video received 5.5 million views on YouTube, and then it's about how to clean your outdoor coil for your AC system. Is it worth it, and what do I have to say about it?
Fully plugged up, they can still be affecting how well the AC unit is able to breathe and therefore affect how efficient the AC unit is able to run. All right, so first thing I want to do before I start working on this, a lot of people will say, hey, I turned off my thermostat so it's not going to run. I don't trust that. That's not good enough. So you should always have some form of disconnect right next to the AC unit. And as you can see, there's this handle in here. All you gotta do is pull it out, and now to the AC unit.
Now you can— Obviously at this point you want to still check to make sure power is killed when you pull up the disconnect. If the unit is not running, like it's not right now, obviously you want to use Or if it is running and not. Either way, you want to use a meter to make sure the power has stopped when you pull that disconnect unit. Just double-check that. I've seen it so many times where it's not wired properly, it doesn't work the way you think it works. Make sure the power is off even though you pulled the disconnect. Make sure that is actually the case.
Either set this on top or you can flip it upside down and put it back where you pulled it out of and it still won't allow electricity to flow. But just to be on the safe side, it's always best to just leave it up on top. Now since we're going to be dealing with water, we want to make sure that this is closed since there is still electricity flowing into a portion of this box. Now a lot of people will say you can clean it from the outside and in some cases that is true, but there's some disadvantages to just cleaning it from the outside and we'll get into those in just a little bit. And on top of that, A lot of homeowners don't know how many rows of coils they have. Do they have one row of coils or do they have 2 rows of coils? And if you've got 2 rows of coils, just cleaning it from the outside, more than likely you're not going to be able to do a very good job of getting the inside row of coils cleaned. All right, so to get to the inside—
When he says rows of coils, he's summing up you have an outside coil, you have an inside coil, you have 2, basically 2 coils, one outside, one inside. So if you only clean the outside, you're not cleaning the inside.
We're gonna have to remove all of these screws that go around the top of the AC unit. There's probably like 8 to 10, maybe 12 screws in total that need to be removed. Now for the most part, the standard size screw head on these AC units is 5/16. And that is what this screwdriver has here. This is made by Klein. It's got a 5/16 driver on it, and I really recommend— if you don't have one of these, I really recommend picking this up because it just makes the job a whole lot easier. And some people will argue, why don't you just put a 5/16 driver in an impact?
If you look at that product number, model number, serial number, unit manufactured in 2015, it is a 4-ton when you see that 048. Divide that by 12, you get 4.
Removing them using the impact is not a bad idea at all. When it comes to tightening them back down when we go to put the lid back on, I strongly recommend not using an impact or a drill because it is not hard at all to overtighten those screws. And what will end up happening is it'll strip out the metal that that screw is being attached into, and then you won't be able to tighten down the lid as tight and securely as it should be. All right, now that all those screws are out, we can pop our—
I would also take that grate off the front as well so I can get as much of that area as I can.
The thing you want to be careful about when lifting this lid up is you've got some wires and some conduit running down over here, so we don't want to put any strain on that. And we also want to make sure that we don't damage the fan at all lifting it up and then also setting it down. Everybody's going to be different.
For me personally, I'm able to just kind of I would be more comfortable, um, kind of propping it on the other corner right there where it's blank and get off of that coil.
Sitting up like this, as long as wind doesn't come along, it's not going to fall. I don't have anywhere to really rest it, but in your case, you might be able to rest it somewhere, or in some cases, you may just have to hold on to it the entire time that you're in here just to make sure that it doesn't come back down. So everybody's situation will be a little bit different. All right, so my AC unit is a perfect example of why you want to clean it from the inside.
That's why it's the model 2 coils. You see those 2 different tracks right there? Outside, inside.
But as you can see, I've got coils connected here, and then I've got 2 rows of fins. So if I was to just clean this from the outside, this inner row of fins and coils would not receive a whole lot of the cleaner. And therefore it wouldn't get as clean as it would need to be. And as you can see, this is the case all the way. One of those items I don't see a whole lot of people talking about or showing people how to know whether or not they've got 1 or 2 rows of coils. The second big advantage to—
I don't talk about them. I don't talk about them because I want you to call a professional. Your professional needs to take care of this for you. It is not that expensive. You can get a tune-up pretty, pretty inexpensively done by a professional. Get it shaved out, get it cleaned, get it maintained.
Lid off and cleaning it from the inside is you're able to clean out anything that is down in the pan of the AC unit. Now, if your AC unit is one that sits underneath of a tree, for instance, then the pan of your AC unit is probably going to be a whole lot fuller than what mine is. And if we look down here at the bottom, if you see these little holes or what look kind of like tunnels that you drive through, these are holes for draining. And if this gets too full, then obviously those can get plugged up and your AC unit would not be able to drain out as efficiently as it should. So we always want to make sure that these are clear of debris. So a great way to go about cleaning this is to get a Shop-Vac or a vacuum cleaner that you're able to put a hose down into the bottom of the AC unit. And just suck everything out, all of the debris, leaves, any dead insects. And in my case, every once in a while I find some dead frogs, unfortunately, down in the bottom of the pan. All right, so now we got that all vacuumed out and looking good. All of the drainage holes have been unplugged. So now let's move on to the next step of cleaning this. So in order to clean the coils, you're going to need some sort of coil cleaner, but I really recommend using this coil cleaner here. I found it to work incredibly well. And of course, I'll have links down in the description for this and everything else in the video. And I'll also have some links for some other coil cleaners that I found to work well in the past. But for me personally, I found this one to work the best, and it's at a—
Obviously, you can use that, you know, kind of spray-in-a-bottle version. Uh, what we use, what I also recommend, is the liquid version. That's the concentrate. You mix it with water, you can spray it on the coils. To me, it's a lot better. You get a lot more coating. You can spray the bottom as well. You can spray the top and get that kind of algae, uh, mildewy stuff off of there as well. This is going to be a little harder to do that because it's going to be a kind of a spray foam.
Um, but now, because of the chemical nature of this cleaner, you're going to want a couple things. You're going to want some rubber gloves in order to protect your hands. And probably more than anything, I suggest a good pair of safety glasses because as this cleaner hits those fins, you never know what direction it's—
Always, always, always read the directions and the safety data on what you should do.
To shoot back in, and sometimes it can be your face and your eyes. So the way I like to disperse my coil cleaner is I like to just go side to side. And you also want to make sure of what direction the fins are going in. Sometimes they can be just going in one direction.
See what I mean? It's, it's going to be kind of hard to coat the whole thing all the way through, but—
And you want to make sure that you're spraying it at an angle that's going to get in between all those fins. So I just spray this side to side, working my way from top to bottom or bottom to top. It really doesn't matter which direction you start in, but just going side to side, making sure that I'm getting all of the coils underneath of the fins to make sure that they're also getting clean. It's not Just the fins are getting clean, but the coils inside of the fins as well. And of course there's 4 sides to an air conditioning unit. I just work on one side at a time, making sure that I'm concentrating the spray just on that one section I'm working on. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to fully coat it. It's not like paint where maybe you have to coat it twice. As long as you've sprayed the area and you've gone over it once, or maybe you overlap a little bit, that's Plenty. The idea is getting this as clean as possible, and anything—
I mean, if you're going to do it, do it right. So, uh, why would you not cover the area? Um, what you want to do is, you know, have that thing activate, pull out the dirt, rinse it off so you're clean.
That you do is going to make it cleaner than it was before to help it run more efficiently, and one can is typically always This is why I would take those grates off as well. It's enough for me to do the end.
This one's, this one's not as bad as some of them. The Carrier's have that kind of a grill situation going on. Some are thicker than that. If you look at the Goodman or the Trane or the Ruud, those could be a little thicker. Either way, pull off the grate, pull off the grill, get full exposure from that coil so you can clean everything.
Sides and also allow for me to do the outside. And this is important for me since I have those 2 sets of coils. Not only am I getting the inside set of coils, I want to make sure that I'm also getting this outer side of coils as well. Because the argument would be made, if it's not good enough to spray it from the outside with 2 sets of coils, then it also wouldn't be good enough to just spray it from the inside with 2 sets of coils, as the cleaner is not able to get to the outside portion. So it's the same thing. I just go side to side, working my way from top to bottom, bottom to top. All right, so now all of the interior coils and all of the coils on the exterior have now all been sprayed. So now we want to give it a little bit of time for that coil cleaner to do its job. I usually give it about 5 to 8 minutes and then come back. All right, so we've given the coil cleaner plenty of time to just sit and do its job. Now we want to rinse it all down, and I typically rinse it down by using one of these garden sprayers.
That's actually a good method. That's exactly how you want to apply the coil cleaner. That's exactly how you want to rinse it off. You want something like that that is not a power washer, not a full stream where you can bend the fins, but it gives you enough soaking coverage area to make a difference. And clean it off. I wish the spray-on Would have been it.
Set it to the shower setting is because it puts out quite a bit of water, but it doesn't put it out at a lot of force. Not that this garden sprayer puts out anything underneath a lot of pressure, but we want to do everything we can not to damage the fins or bend them in any way, because if you bend the fins, then it can also lead to decreased efficiency. So just like I did with the cleaner, I'll do the same thing with the garden sprayer. I'll just go back and forth, working my way up and down. And just making sure that everything is getting sprayed out of both sides. And as I go back and forth with this, you can literally see the difference as it just washes it away, all that grime and dirt and mold and mildew that's been building up over the year or years. And rinsing it as you're going side to side and going up and down, it's just one of those oddly satisfying things seeing how much—
I mean, you can see the difference in real time between how it looked before I will look after. So, you know, more coverage the better. Uh, the more you can get, the better. Fully clean the coil.
Cleaner it is. All right, so now all the interior and exterior coils—
See, you could have, you know, sprayed down there as well, and that would have been a lot easier to get up.
Now what I like to do, you see all of those suds down in the pan of the AC unit? This is where I do turn the garden sprayer to a little higher of a pressure setting. And I just spray out the bottom because that residue that's in that water, it still has some of that cleaner in it. This is a great opportunity to go ahead and clean up the pan. It won't get it as clean as if you were going to pressure wash it, but it definitely makes it a whole lot cleaner. And you're also doing the job of getting all that residual cleaner out of the pan of the AC unit. All right, so now at this point I can put my lid back on and I want to make sure that that lid is overlapping everything around the exterior of all of my walls of the AC unit. And then once I've got the lid down in place, that's when I'll just put all of my screws back in that I took and make sure that I'm using a screwdriver to tighten these down. So I'm just hand tightening them and not allowing a drill or an impact to overtighten and possibly strip them out. And so now that I'm done working on the inside of the AC, at this point I can reconnect the power to my AC unit. And what great results we have gotten from cleaning this. I can clearly see those coils through those fins and they're just shining. And as you saw, super easy to do. Didn't take very long to do it. Just about anybody can do this themselves. So save yourself some money in the short term by allowing this to run more efficiently so it doesn't have to run as long, saving you money on your—
It is going to run more efficient if you clean it. Um, I recommend have a professional come and clean it. Have somebody that does it all the time to clean your system, check it, do a full maintenance a full check of your system to make sure not only are your coils clean, make sure it's operating. 5.5 million views, so, uh, something very popular. I know try to do it yourself, I know it's a popular business, but I've been doing it 25 years. If you can get a professional to do it and you can afford it, you can You can't afford not to do it. Or you hit a wire or nick something taking that thing on and off, you're going to have a tech out there anyway. Save yourself trouble, get a tune-up, get it done right, get it done by a pro. Stay safe and make sure your system is running as efficiently as possible. Home and Life Comfort with Derek Cole.
