Clean your aircon every 4 months if it runs most nights. Every 6 months if it’s a living room unit you only switch on for a few hours in the evening. Bangkok air is dirty, and our shop and office customers clean theirs even more often than that.
Most manuals say once a year, but those manuals weren’t written for Bangkok. Here it’s hot and humid all year, and the air carries a lot of dust and PM2.5 pollution, worst of all in the winter season.
Do the math
A bedroom unit here runs eight hours a night, every night, all year. That’s about 2,900 hours. In a cooler country, the same unit runs for maybe four months and gets about 1,000 hours. So your unit does three times the work before its first yearly service. Same machine. Three times the hours.
Now think about what it breathes in. There’s building work going on somewhere most of the time. That dust doesn’t stay outside. The fan pulls it in and it sticks to the cooling coil inside. The air is also damp, so the coil stays wet. Dust plus water is what mould needs to grow.
Two units, two schedules
Two things move any unit to the 4-month plan, no matter how often you use it. One is an open kitchen. Cooking oil floats through the air, lands on the coil, and turns normal dust into a sticky film that won’t blow off. The other is building work next door.
Why some companies say 3 months
Most Bangkok cleaning companies say 3 to 6 months. We say 4 to 6. Three months is more than a lightly used unit needs, so cleaning that often mostly just costs you more. Don’t go past 6 months on a unit that runs most nights.
What happens if you wait too long
Airflow drops first. The coil fills with dust, the room takes longer to get cold, and the unit has to run longer to get there. Your electric bill goes up. We can’t tell you by how much, because it depends on the unit and the room, so treat that as a warning and not a number.
Then comes the smell. Mould grows on the wet, dirty coil, and the fan blows it into the room. That’s the musty smell you get in the first minute. Signs your aircon needs cleaning covers the other warning signs.
Then comes the water. The same dirt washes down and blocks the drain pipe. Once that pipe is blocked, the water runs down your wall instead. At that point it’s damage, not maintenance.
The filter is your job
Take the filter out every two weeks if the unit runs nightly, once a month if it doesn’t. Rinse it, dry it all the way, put it back. Five minutes, no tools. It’s the easiest thing you can do to slow down the dirt. Here’s how to clean the filter properly, and where it stops being enough.
What a full clean is
It’s a chemical wash, or ล้างใหญ่ in Thai. We take the indoor unit off the wall and open it up, so the coil, the fan wheel and the drain pipe all get washed. Nobody just sprays it through the front cover. It’s ฿1,200 for one wall unit and ฿2,200 for two, with the outdoor unit included. See the full price list. Once every 4 to 6 months, that’s a bill you can plan for.
Frequently asked
Does aircon cleaning frequency really matter in Bangkok specifically?
Yes, more than in most places. Your unit runs nearly all year, and the air here holds more dust and damp than the countries most manuals are written for.
Can I just clean the filter myself and skip the professional clean?
No. The filter is your first line of defence, not a replacement for a full clean. The coil, drain pipe and fan wheel sit behind it, and they only come clean if the unit is opened up. How to do the filter yourself, and what it doesn’t cover.