If you want your air conditioning to keep you cool this summer in Ocala, FL but you also want to do some landscaping to your surroundings, it’s important to pay attention to how you do this around your outside AC unit. Here are five tips on how to landscape around your AC.
1. Create Some Shade
As the summer heat continues, shade can become quite precious. This is no less true for your AC unit than it is for you yourself.
It’s best to make sure your AC’s outdoor unit is out of the direct path of any sunlight. It should have been placed on the north or east side of your home. If this wasn’t possible, you can place a specialized HVAC cover on your AC unit so it gets at least some sun protection.
This will decrease the likelihood of your outdoor unit overheating as it tries to keep you cool. Overheating places your system under significant stress and may even cause it to shut down entirely. Consequently, it may increase your long-term AC repair costs and shorten the entire system’s life span.
2. Keep Your AC Away From Trees
Though tall trees can be an excellent source of shade, it’s not a good idea to let them loom over your outdoor air conditioning unit. In fact, tall trees are far more likely to cause trouble under such conditions.
If a large tree stands near the condenser and casts a shadow over it, debris from that tree, including acorns, twigs and falling leaves, will be far more likely to fall into the condenser and interfere with its workings. Wind may also blow debris that falls around the tree into the outdoor unit if the latter is sufficiently close by.
As a result, many different problems may follow. For example, airflow through the unit may decline, and this may cause overall system performance to plummet. The compressor may cease to function as it should, which would also bring down efficiency and performance while raising your utility bills, and ice may even form inside the condenser.
For these and other reasons, try to keep large trees as far away from your outdoor AC unit as possible. You should either place the unit in an area without trees or prevent trees from growing in its immediate vicinity in the first place. The same applies to large shrubs and bushes.
3. Give Your AC Some Room
We’ve already discussed the wisdom of not crowding the immediate area around your AC condenser with trees and other plant life, but it’s a good idea to extend and generalize this principle. If you can, strive to give your unit at least 5 feet of totally clear lateral space in all directions. If this is not possible, aim for a bare minimum of 1 foot of such lateral space.
Once you do this, you will substantially decrease the probability that stray debris will fly into your unit. You will also make it as easy as possible for HVAC technicians to reach it when the time comes to perform preventive maintenance or other kinds of service.
5. Think About a Gravel Garden
We’ve talked about the many harmful effects that stray debris can have on your AC unit. A simple means of mitigating that danger is to create a gravel garden.
If you put your AC unit atop a raised concrete platform and surround that platform with some gravel or mulch, you can reliably protect the unit from flying debris. Scarcely any plants can grow in gravel, so this mitigates the threat from plant-based debris. It will also create the kind of distance you need between your unit and everything else in your yard.
You don’t need to choose between the aesthetics of your yard and the effectiveness of your air conditioning. With the proper care and attention, homeowners in Ocala, FL can have both. For help getting the best of both worlds, call Senica Air Conditioning, Inc. today and ask for our AC services.
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