Con clean for nuts.

After enduring a sleepless night of incessant squeaking from the air con unit, I gave up and blew 50 bucks on some air con chemical cleaning kit at the DIY shop today. It started with a mild squeak, the kind of annoying sound that the unit emits once in a while but dies down after an hour or so. An annoying eccentricity I'd always attributed to a filthy and aging air con. Unfortunately, the squeak didn't stop. If anything, it probably became more strident as the night wore on. Plugging my ears with tissue paper barely helped and I vaguely remember dreaming about being trapped in a room full of squeaking kettles during my intermittent sleep.

I know, I'm supposed to be on an extremely tight fiscal budget for the next 3 months (which I still am) but desperate times call for desperate measures. And after 10 hours of near insomnia, i was desperate. Besides, I'm placing it on my dad's account under the pretext of household expenses. So anyway I figured it was probably all that filth clogging up the air con which was to blame. After all, ever since I'd started sleeping with the air con on a daily basis since last year, I'd never cleaned the air con other than scrubbing the filters a couple of times when it was obvious the air flow was indiscernible or the perfunctory weekly vacuuming of the external casing.

Certainly no flushing out of the cooling coils or rotor blades. Naturally, the whole interior was caked in a thick layer of furry grime that looked ominously organic. A state of affairs which persisted due to a combination of inertia and the sense of dread I inevitably experienced whenever the thought of cleaning all that grime crossed my mind. But the squeaking was driving me nuts and figuring it was all the filth, I went ahead and purchased the kit.

I hate having to do household chores or cleaning in particular. But when I have to do so, I want it done fast and with minimal hassle. So when I saw the bold proclamation "Clean your AC in 15 mins only!" on the cleaning fluid bottle, I settled on the air con cleaning kit, even though it looked decidedly bulkier with a 2 litre solution, spray bottle and 'catchment' bag for the dirty fluid and was almost twice the price of the other kit.

Which naturally was crap. After spending a good 10 mins figuring to pry open the air con case to reach the filth within and realising that I had to unscrew the cover, the whole dirty and very messy process took almost 2 hours from start to finish.

So it was with great hope and expectation that I turned on the air con after the messy operation that left dubious black spots splattered nicely across my t shirt. And was rewarded with a blast of cold fresh air and a deafening screech. bah. Time to get the professionals and convince the dad our air con units need maintenance.