Clean Your Air Conditioner Drain Before it Leaks!
Air Conditioning Units produce one natural by product, Water! The method that this water is produced is just like the water that forms on the outside of a glass with ice in it. The warmer air from your home, meets the colder surface of the evaporator coil and naturally, condensation occurs. The bad part happens when you find the air conditioner drain line clogged and a water leak on the floor!
The water that comes from your AC Unit, runs down the sides of the coil and collects inside the condensate pan, eventually reaching the condensate drain and flowing off to the drain method your installer chose. When the condensation drain becomes gummed up or plugged, that same innocent water can back up and leak, and can literally ruin your life!
Cleaning Your AC Condensate Pan and Drain Line
Face it, if you are not going to have a service company come out and service your air conditioner every season, you are going to need to do a few things on your own. Fortunately, you can do this before an AC Water Leak happens!
According to the Tampa Handyman, one method he uses is to just grab his wet/dry vacuum, and use it to draw all the build up from your drain line, from the outside of the home, where it exits! While this will work for some, there are a few other methods to clean your AC Condensate Drain as well.
Gravity or Pumped AC Condensate Drains
In almost every instance, you will have either:
Gravity Condensate Drain, where the water flows from your evaporator coil drain pan, directly into a small PVC drain line, and either into a drain system, in or outside your home.
As you can see in the top picture, the installer of this condensate line took the time to install a few extra pieces of the PVC drain, to facilitate the cleaning of the drain lines. Yours may or may not have these caps in place, but if you end up having to cut into the piping system to clean it, (common on older systems) you can rebuild it with the cleanouts in place! All pieces for the new drain can be picked up at a hardware store, for less than $10, or by clicking the links below.
Condensate Pump Drain System, where the water from your coil pan is piped into a small condensate pump, that automatically turns itself on and off as the water fills the collection tray.
In most cases, the PVC piping or clear plastic condensate hose, will fit directly into a hole on the top of the condensate pump, filling the reservoir. A second hose is then connected, to channel the water outside the home or into a drain system. Condensate pump systems are most commonly used in areas below the level of the homes drain.
Air Conditioner Condensate Pumps
Regardless of which system your AC system uses, almost all blockages occur in the small bend, called a trap. The trap system always holds a small amount of water, that is there to keep fumes and other objects from backing in to the system. Over time, gum builds up... the trap becomes clogged and you have a plugged ac line!
Cleaning Your AC Condensate Drain
The most common method of cleaning, is to gain access to your drain line... whether that is within a cleanout or from inside the evaporator coil drain pan, and simply flush the line with either compressed air or a water hose, forcing everything from the inside to outside. (Never flush water from outside the home, to the inside of the unit, a mess will occur!)
If you don't have access to an open end of the drain from inside, you may need to disconnect or cut the drain line to perform the cleaning.
This should be done at least once every year and more often in areas where you use air conditioning more than 6 months of the year! Doing so will prevent the AC drain from leaking water into the home!
Tagged with: ac leaks • ac water • air conditioner leaks
Filed under: Central Air Conditioners
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I have a problem with condensate overflow. Drain line is clear, but condensate is leaking into the bottom of the unit, dripping into the overflow pan, and saturating the thermal blanket on the inside bottom of the unit, as well as the adjacent ducting.
Coils are not icing, and unit is cooling the house well, even though we’re in South Florida and temps and humidity are high.
Is likely cause perforation of the catch tray which funnels condensate from coils to the drain line?
Any DIY fixes, like :radiator stop-leak:?
@ Mike –
Thanks for asking the question.
It almost sounds as if the coil drain pan may be cracked, or be leaking where the PC connects to one of the fittings.
If the unit is a horizontal flow (lying on its side) you will see a full size pan on the bottom side of the evap coil. Up or downflow units have a collar type pans, that only circle the edges of the lower side of the coil, allowing the air to flow through the center, or around the edges.
One way or another, you are going to have to open the sides of the air handler or coil housing and get your eyes on the pan to see where its leaking from. If its just a small crack, you can probably get some silicone and do a quick fix on it to get through another season. You WILL have to shut off the unit for several hours while you do it and make sure it has time to fully dry before turning it back on.
Mark
we had water start puddling in the pan of our heater downstairs. Turned out to be a bad condensate pump. my husband was shocked at just how easy it was to replace – we ordered one, it was delivered in 2 days, and we simply unplugged the brokwen pump and plugged the new one in! 5 minutes later… done!
Thank you for the GREAT tips on this! ~ Jill
@ Stuart –
Looks like an interesting and great product for sure! Thanks for the tip!
I am an HVAC contractor for over 25 years and the mighty pump is one of the best products that has come along. It allows me to clear drain lines without going in the home and opening the drain or trying to use a wet-vac that doesn’t have anywhere near the power this pump has and this pump does not require electric. It’s great.
THANK YOU THANK YOU!
We found a small water stain on our ceiling last night and discovered an overfull drain pan! The water float switch on the side shut the air conditioner off in time to prevent serious damage!
THANK YOU!!
Air conditioning Leakage is one of the most common problems, and it’s sad to know that owners don’t have that good ideas on how to handle such problem. And so regular check up and maintenance should be done to prevent further complications.