Should you pour water on your air condition unit outside?

Answer 1

According to this web site: http://www.homeenergy.org/archive/hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/95/950904.html shading your AC unit makes little difference, if any. Here's the deal, you save money if the air an AC unit pulls in is cooler--the unit doesn't need to expend as much money cooling the air to the desired temperature. So here's the problem--shading the AC unit does not cool the air that it is drawing in. AC units draw in a very large amount of air and shading the AC unit shades only a very, very small portion of that air. So that very, very small portion of air is cooler than the air that is out in the sun, so you see very very small savings. But the vast majority of the air drawn into the unit was not in that shade but for a split second and does not benefit at all from the shade on the unit. So unless you have so much shade that a significant portion of the air drawn into your AC unit comes from that shaded area, then shading your AC unit will make only very little difference to the efficiency of the unit. Even more, there is a danger in shading an AC unit that the shading material may block airflow to the AC unit. Blocking airflow to the unit reduces its efficiency. For this reason it is probably best to just not shade the unit at all--the potential problems associated with shading a unit (blocking airflow) are greater than the potential benefits of shading the unit.

Answer 2

Yes if it is set to heat indoors but if it isn't than go get it checked out by a qualified AC technician.