A/C Repair

Last summer the A/C unit started dripping into my basement storage area. The area doesn't get visited often so things were pretty water logged when I finally discovered it. I surmised that the water was escaping from the condensation collection system, whatever it was, and running down into the ductwork in the basement and thence dripping onto the floor. I put some buckets down to collect the water and put a fan in there to dry it up. Summer doesn't last long here, so pretty soon the A/C was shut down.

It's been a little warm this summer so we have been running the A/C intermittently, and, surprise, surprise, the A/C has not fixed itself. Condensation is still leaking into the basement. I had been wanting to open up the A/C chamber and take a look to see if it was something simple, but that would have meant actually doing something, and lord knows we sure did not want that.

My brother from Iowa came out to visit a couple of weeks ago, and not having anything better to do, we decided to take a look. It wasn't too difficult to open up, move a few items out the way, take out a dozen or so sheet metal screws, pull back some rubber insulation on the A/C pipes and all is exposed. Most of it anyway. Only problem is that there does not seem to be anything really wrong. No clogged drains, no big cracks, nothing that would give us an obvious clue as to where the water is coming from.

Brother Andy notices some of the fiberglass insulation has broken down and fallen into the condensation collection tray. It doesn't look like much, but I suppose the water is wicking up into the insulation and thence over the edge and down into the basement. The theory is pretty thin, but it is all we have so we look around for something to put between the tray and insulation to keep things tidy. A thin sheet of rigid plastic would do the trick. What do we have?

We look around for a bit and finally light on some surplus plastic kitty litter buckets. We get out the saber saw, cut off the top rim and the bottom and run a cut down the side and we have a good size sheet of semi-rigid plastic. Estimate the size, cut to length and slide into place, one on each side of the A-coil.

Turn the A/C on, and at first it doesn't seem to help at all, more water than ever is running out. But I check back a couple of days later and there is no water at all! Hooray, we fixed it! I'm still a little skeptical that our Afro-American engineering actually solved the problem, but I have had no more water in the basement. This is just too weird for words.

The A/C A-coil sits underneath the downdraft furnace.



Update November 2016 replaced missing pictures. At some point I realized the problem with the water overflowing the catch tray was that 1) it was very humid so a great deal of water was being condensed out of the air, and 2) the drain pipe wasn't big enough to handle the increase. There is a provision for a second drain pipe but I still haven't gotten around to fitting one.