House Purchase Advice

[Jewels]

Well, the condensate lines for my AC unit somehow failed, causing water to pour into the overflow pan for my unit. Additionally, the auto kill switch for the unit that's located in the pan failed so water proceeded to pool up in it until it overflowed in my attic and came streaming down through my hall closet and all over the upstairs floor. Fortunately I caught it when I did and fortunately I used to build homes so I know what to do during disasters like that. Carpet is currently pulled up with fans on it all night, closet is draining from holes I poked in the ceiling and all soggy padding is removed. Hopefully I can get someone out here today to fix it, but I have to say that it wasn't too uncomfortable last night sleeping without the AC...thank God it dropped down to about 72*.

Hoping that it isn't an expensive fix, but pretty much ruins my work morning

Lee, i feel your pain, our condensate drain line cracked at a joint last week - water everywhere. we got it early though.

I worked for an HVAC company over the last 4 years. Not an expert, and you can look at lots of companies that offer similar items but I can recommend a few things you may want to look into as preventative things that can either be set-and-forget or quick application from time to time.

- "pan tabs" are little pill shaped things you put in the drain pan from time to time. they dissolve over a period of weeks and are basically an anti-fungal, anti-algae concoction that keeps your line from filling with sludge. alot of our customers would use PT-151 but check your tonnage first.

- the overflow alarms are often hit or miss because the moving floats jam up with sludge or the magnet gets coated. I'd recommend supplementing the float in the pan with a pipe-mounted safety switch for the unit drainage pipe. i like them because they're very reliable and very accurate. they use sonar to determine how full the pipe is with water.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://diversitech.com/prod/sos.php">http://diversitech.com/prod/sos.php</a><!-- m -->

$350 later and it's fixed. Dude was really cool, I gave him a bunch of beers and put a fan in the attic while he worked. He showed me how bad the original installers fucked up the condensate line pipes. Basically they must have been huffing dope. They put the trap too far downstream from the pan, they didn't use a proper trap, and the sloping of the drainage pipe was fucked...it was basically creating two "traps" because it went uphill near where it drained out. He replaced the trap with a clear one so you can see blocks building up (it also has a switch built into it in case it starts to overflow), replaced all the other piping to how it should have been when it was installed, rewired a bunch of stuff that was wrong, and plugged up the open hole in the overflow pan so that the switch in it will actually work. He also checked the unit outside and the refrigerant is right where it should be, which is awesome because I haven't had it recharged since I moved in.

Just so glad to have the AC on again!!!!!

Since I work for a heating and a/c company I will tell you that if you have to have your system recharged you have a leak, and a leak is bad. Since they switched to new refrigerant the cost of refrigerant has gone up a lot. So just keep in mind that you should never have to recharge your system, if you do, you have a problem. Refrigerant just doesn't disappear, its a closed system.