How do I take apart a Hisense HLAW0825TW to clean the fan?

You aren't going to like this, but there is no way to properly deep clean that blower wheel while the unit is still sitting in the window frame. These Hisense models, like many modern window units, use a wrap-around plastic shroud that is held in place by screws at the bottom and hidden clips along the top edge. To get to the cylindrical fan, you have to pull the entire internal chassis out or remove the outer cabinet entirely. If you try to force it while it's mounted, you're almost guaranteed to snap the plastic tabs or, worse, bend the evaporator fins.

Start by removing every visible screw on the sides and bottom of the front cover. Check behind the filter and under any small plastic screw covers. Once the screws are out, you ussually have to lift the front panel slightly upward to unhook it from those top clips. But since the mold is on the blower wheel, just taking the front off won't give you enough clearance. You need to get to the scroll housing, which usually requires the whole shell to come off so you can spray it down without getting water all over your floor.

Since your brackets are flimsy, you'll want to have someone help you lift the unit down onto a sturdy table or a workbench. Once it's open, use a soft brush and a mix of water and white vinegar or a dedicated coil cleaner to get into the fins of the fan. It's tedious work because those little plastic blades on the blower wheel catch everything. Rotate the wheel by hand and hit every single section.

To prevent the gunk from coming back so fast next season, look into pan tablets or biocide strips. You can tuck them into the condensate tray near the evaporator coil once you have it open. They slowly dissolve and kill off the spores before they can colonize the fan. Also, try running the unit in 'fan only' mode for about twenty minutes before you shut it off for the day. It helps dry out the internal components so moisture doesn't just sit there and breed mold overnight.

Are you positive it's mold and not just wet dust buildup? Four months is a pretty short window for a major infestation. Before you go trough the hassle of ripping it out of the window, have you ruled out an issue with the unit's pitch? If it isn't tilted back slightly, the condensate just sits in the tray and creates that "gunk" much faster. Also, are you sure your indoor humidity isn't spiked? If the room is a swamp, even a brand new unit will look gross in weeks. Might be worth checking the drainage before you break the plastic clips trying to get inside.

Back in the day, you could just pop a few metal thumb screws and the whole guts woud slide out like a drawer. These new Hisense units are a different breed of plastic headache. If you're dead set on not pulling it, you might try a long-reach radiator brush and some foaming spray, but you're just moving the dirt around. I remember when we'd just drill a small weep hole in the base pan to make sure the water acutally drained instead of sitting there like a swamp. Most of these new ones 'sling' the water onto the coils to save energy, but all it does is turn the blower into a petri dish. If you don't pull it, you're just whistling past the graveyard.

Hi! Thanks for this reply, I'm having the same issue. I went in with a brush for cleaning reusable straws and scrubbed the fan blades (super tedious) with vinegar solution. After I scrubbed, I blew into the opening with a cold hair dryer for a bit to help everything evaporate, and I cleaned the fins in the front and back with coil cleaner. The smell is mostly gone now.

I'm concerned however that I don't know what's underneath the squirrel cage and wonder if the vinegar will corrode or - much more importantly - potentially interact with anything to make something flammable in there. Could you let me know if this is a concern? If so, anything I can do to mitigate any damage? I'm concerned with safety most of all. Thank you!

To the OP, I think the reason this happened in my case (to one unit but not the other, I got 2 at Costco at the same time) is because the apartment above mine is dripping directly onto mine.