Ductless Mini-Splits: What Maintenance is Needed?

 

If you have been scheduling maintenance for your climate control systems for a while, and we sincerely hope you have, you probably already know that that the common schedule is once a year. There’s a reason for that, and it’s one that actually doesn’t quite apply to ductless mini splits. If you are using a ductless mini split system, you actually need to schedule maintenance twice as often as other systems. If you don’t, you won’t be able to reap the full benefits of preventive maintenance services.

Why Preventive Maintenance is Important?

Proactivity is the key to keeping any HVAC system in good condition for as long as possible. Most of the problems that can develop in air conditioners, heaters, and heat pumps start out pretty subtle. They don’t give off any kind of symptoms that you would be able to recognize unless you closely examined the problem. That’s why it’s often so difficult to catch problems early enough to prevent most of the damage by simply waiting for a warning sign. If you actually want to prevent issues from getting too developed in your system, the best way to do it is to schedule preventive maintenance.

Preventive maintenance is so much better because it’s a proactive method for dealing with issues. Regularly scheduling maintenance gives your technician a chance to closely examine the system for issues, and catch them before they manage to progress too far. The earlier these issues are caught, the cheaper they tend to be to fix. You can save a pretty significant amount of money on repair issues over the life of your system by doing this. Assuming, of course, that you schedule it often enough.

Bi-Annual Ductless Maintenance

The annual maintenance recommendation for most HVAC systems is based on the amount of demand they experience over the course of a year. Most heaters and air conditioners only have one season of high demand, winter and summer respectively. In order to cope with those times of high demand, preventive maintenance is scheduled the season before. This ensures that the system is in top condition before it’s expected to perform at top levels. This changes for ductless mini splits.

Ductless systems offer both heating and air conditioning functions, which is the main reason that most people install them. Unfortunately, this also means that ductless systems accumulate twice as much wear and tear. The year-round use that most ductless systems are subjected to means that you need to schedule maintenance twice as often. You should have preventive maintenance done every spring and fall, to make sure that your ductless mini split is in good shape throughout the year. Even if you’ve missed that window for maintenance this year, though, you should still schedule it as quickly as possible. Better late than never, as the saying goes.

Maintenance for ductless mini split should be done at least once a year, or better twice a year if they are used year round. Here are a few of the maintenance items that will be performed with a technician at a regular maintenance visit. Technician performing maintenance for ductless mini split system

- Check and clean air filters, or replace with new filters if found cracked or broken.

- Clean sweep the evaporator coils on the inside unit and the condenser coils in the outside unit.

- Make sure the indoor unit’s blower assembly and fan wheel are balanced.

- Inspect all pipes and connections through the side of the building to make sure they’re in good condition.

- Check that the outdoor unit and its pipes are tight and secured, free from any vibration that could cause unnecessary and damaging wear.

- Check all electrical and mechanical connections.

- Check remote controls for normal operation.