YSK because the first hot spell is when most people discover their AC unit is broken.

Several years ago I waited to turn on my AC. This is how I found out about one of the busiest times for repairmen and had to sweat for two weeks. Now I do a test run a couple of weeks before it heats up. Same goes for the furnace at the end of Autumn.

Edit to add: YSK line (Rule 2)

  • Fosheze@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is definitely good advice for vehicle AC because like you said, it keeps the compressor seals in good shape. However it isn’t as important for residential AC systems because they use fully hermitic compressors. There is no shaft seal that can fail. Depending on your outdoor temps, running your home AC in the winter can actually be very bad for it.

    When it’s cold outside liquid refrigerant will tend to settle in the compressor crank case that means when that compressor starts up it will immediately suck in and try to compress that incompressable liquid refrigerant. Depending on the compressor type this will drastically reduce it’s lifespan or just straight up kill it. On systems designed to be used in cold weather there will be a crank case heater on the compressor to boil off any liquid refrigerant in the crank case. But if your system wasn’t built with cold weather running in mind then it won’t have one of those.