It can be quite distressing to find water leaking from your air conditioner. When air conditioners leak water, this means that they are having difficulty draining the moisture they remove from your home. The good news is that the reasons for this problem are quite common and are easily fixable.
Blocked Condensate Drain
The most frequent reason for an indoor puddle is a clogged condensate drain line. As your air conditioner cools the air, it also removes humidity. This moisture collects on the cold evaporator coils as liquid water. This water is supposed to drip into a drain pan and flow through a small plastic pipe to the outside of your house.
Over time, a thick sludge of dust, mold, and algae can grow inside that pipe and block the flow. When the water has nowhere else to go, it overflows the edges of the drain pan and spills onto your floor. You can often clear this out with a wet-dry vacuum. However, if the clog is deep inside the pipe, it may require a professional to blow the line clear with pressurized air.
A Cracked or Rusted Drain Pan
If your air conditioner is an older model, your drain pan may be wearing out. While drain pans today are made of plastic, older systems have metal pans that rust over time. As the pan rusts through, a pinhole can develop that allows water to seep out onto the floor. You will especially notice this leak if your system runs for a long time. The good news is that replacing a drain pan is a routine repair for HVAC technicians. A drain pan replacement is a much cheaper and better alternative than allowing your floor to rot.
Frozen Coils and Restricted Airflow
Frozen evaporator coils are a very messy problem. When your air filter is covered in dirt, the air cannot move across the coils. The temperature drops so low that the moisture turns into a solid block of ice. Once the system finally shuts off, that block of ice begins to melt all at once.
The drain pan is usually not deep enough to handle such a sudden flood of water. Since this is the case, it overflows onto your floor in a matter of minutes. Checking your air filter once a month is the easiest way to prevent this from happening. Regular filter changes will also keep your energy bills lower, as your system will not have to work so hard to regulate the temperature in your home.
As soon as you notice a puddle around your air conditioner, get an HVAC technician on the scene quickly. They can unclog the condensate line and fix any other issues that are causing your system to malfunction. To continue to beat the heat during the stifling summers in Brunswick, GA, contact Hendrix Air for AC repair.
