A/C air intake filtration

Ok, now that I've done the water intake strainers, got to thinking about air intake. 2 of my A/C's have nothing in front of the cooling fins, 1 A/C unit had a washable foam piece for filtering. What is the forum's recommendation? I'm sure they weren't designed to just take in unfiltered air.

First clean your return air coils carefully with a stiff brush and a vacuum. After that flush them out with a foaming coil cleaner. I like the stuff you can get at HD. Works well and has a pleasant, clean smell to it.

If a lot of the fins on the coils are bent over and blocking air flow use a fin comb to straighten them out. Then use good washable filters. The best, IMO, are the ones that are made out of a stiff black plastic woven material and are thin enough to to slide down properly into the built in filter tracks that most good A/C units will have on the sides of the front of the coil fin surface. Some of these filters even come with heat sealed edges which make it even easier to slide the filter into the track.

Depending on how you use your A/C these should be cleaned monthly. When you clean them add pan tabs to the condensation tray to keep it clean and less likely to block the drain line.

Fin rake: DiversiTech T-101 Fin-Tool Nylon Kit, Fits 13-20 Fins Per In.

Coil cleaner: A/C Safe AC-920 Air Conditioner Safe Foam Coil Cleaner, Cleans Coils Q
The cap that comes with this makes a pretty good fin comb.

Pan tabs: http://tinyurl.com/omjkazg

Thanks for the excellent info...Off to the local HD now!

I should have mentioned that the type of filters I was talking about you will not find at HD. But a good marine A/C shop should have them or be able to get them.

You can buy filters designed for window air conditioners and cut them to fit. I hadn't seen those condensation tray tabs before. I've got some on order.

I bought the cut to fit foam reusable air filter material at Home Depot. That was the best they had. I also bought and installed some of the tablets. We'll see how they do. I did clean the coils with the A/C safe A/C 920...pretty easy to use, and pretty effective. Now my boat smells "citrusy"!, lol. Anyway, I feel a lot better about my 3 A/C units now. Not sure if that kind of servicing was ever done before, especially since only 1 of the units had a filter and it was so filthy, it fell apart in my hand when I removed it.

Nice Work!



1983 Present 42 Sundeck
Twin Lehman 135's

Thanks for reminding me that my a/c filter needed cleaning. This is what should be on the inlet side of your evaporator coil, looks like screen wire but works by trapping lint, dust, etc electrostaically. Just rinse it clean with water and re-install once you find a supplier.
Bill