Mini split cleaning

I bought a SpeedClean bag. I am reasonably happy with it so far. I took apart one of my Mitsubishi high wall appliances. Off came the main cover and louvers. Removing three screws on the left and the set screw on the squirrel cage allowed pretty easy removal of the cage just like in the vid. There are three tabs and some tugging and pulling to remove the condensate tray. I removed the horizontal vane motor as well as it looked like it would be easier to get it out of the way than to maneuver the tray around it, two little screws and it can be pulled out of the say and taped to the right side of the unit to preclude stress on the wire bundle.

The tray and squirrel cage were pretty nasty as were the surfaces around the cage where soggy stuff was flung. That includes the safety cages in front of the vertical louvers. It is pretty groady in there. I knew it would be because I had looked at the blower cage with a flashlight.

Cleaning the cage was super easy and much more thorough out in the driveway. I vacuumed it off. Still looked bad. I don't know if that step was worth the trouble. I soaked everything in neutral detergent after hosing off with a typical garden hose-end sprayer. After spraying, soaking and spraying, the cage looked like new. I cleaned the main case, louvers and condensate tray with a soft cloth or brush in the same detergent. I gave everything a 10-minute treatment in diluted bleach, rinsed and dried them off with a soft rag and left them in the sun for an hour while I made and had lunch.

Indoors, on went the bag. I cleaned the coil with $self rinsing foaming spray cleaner$ where stuff was visibly stuck between the fins. It took repeated applications. Some gunk came out but some tiny bits never came out. Rinse and rinse. I cleaned the rest with Evap Power C that was the choice at the local supplier that sells to the public. Rinse and rinse; Why cut corners and not rinse when I've gotten this far into it!

Reinstallation of the blower cage was easy. Reinstallation of the condensate tray took a while. Lining the ends up to the shallow grooves to its sides that they fit into was not easy to figure out and it was not obvious what I should have checked the fit more carefully before I wiggled it out. The angle of attack on snapping it in is not obvious either. I must have spent a half hour at it, but it seemed like hours, of course. (I took it out again the following week to see if I could put a copper wire underneath the coils to suppress microbial growth and found it much easier with experience.) The rest was a snap.

Looking to the future, I have a couple of high wall appliances that are close to the wall on the left so I might not be able to pull the cage out as easily. I think that they will come out underneath and one of them has a big exhaust fan in that wall close to where the trajectory of the cage would naturally go when pulling it out the side. We'll see. Installation location choice should be made with attention to this maneuver. Give 'er about 26 inches on the left if you can! If that can’t be done, the blower cage will have to be cleaned in place, or the whole appliance removed after pumping out the refrigerant and disconnecting.

Back to the newly cleaned appliance. I wanted to re-set that appliance on the wall because I found that the drain pigtail goes from the right side all the way to the left side within the unit before it enters the wall. Poor drainage plan, I think. Ironically, the day I got everything assembled and ready to start, the appliance to be attended to suddenly started to rain copiously all over the floor underneath it.

I got into the wall to reroute the pigtail and the hose, but the hole in the wall does not line up perfectly in the horizontal dimension and the pigtail has a fraction of an inch climb before it enters the wall. I want to raise the appliance a little, and shift it to the left a little. I had to straighten the mounting plate a little. Due to my ham-fisted handling of it, I bent it a little at the top at the tabs. I also wanted to give the whole thing a slight lean to the left so it will drain more completely. It seemed to have a slight lean to the right to begin with.

I installed some temporary "hooks", made from some scrap brackets I had in the garage, in the wall and moved the appliance up and hung it onto those. I managed to get the mounting plate off and reposition it. (I was considering making a sling of sorts to support it from underneath.) It is all done and, amazingly, it still works. Good thing since we have 100+ heat indexes this week.

I am planning on redoing the condensate lines in the stud spaces with hard pipe where I can do it easily. That will be for at least 4 of seven units. The installers used a mix of corrugated tube on some units and transparent flexible plastic tube on others. I don’t like either of them. I could not run my string trimmer “snake” down the corrugated and the plastic seems to tend to collapse where it is curved. The snap-on drain pigtail on the units is corrugated as well so difficult to snake from the beginning of the drainage at the tray.

I am optimistic that more regular cleaning of the coils and tray will keep drain lines clear of clogs for the ones that I can’t get into the walls easily. We’ll see.