Posted: 7/23/2016 12:36:26 PM EDT
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I know what you're thinking. The drain hole outside is clogged, so the bottom pan is getting full and leaking inside. Or the unit is tilted, so water is draining out the front instead out the back like it's supposed to.
But no. It's not leaking out the bottom. It's leaking from the top. The top of the AC unit, where the air comes out. Specifically, the vanes that control the direction of the air flow. Water is condensing on these plastic vanes, and dripping down the front of the unit, and pooling on the windowsill before soaking the carpet below the window. I'm at my wit's end trying to figure out how the hell water gets up there. Or how the plastic vanes somehow get colder than the coils themselves. Does anyone have any ideas? |
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The cool air blowing across the directional vanes is condensing. This would indicate one of two issues.
1) The air in the room is hot and humid, as room temp and RH% drops the condensation should stop. 2) The unit is low on refrigerant and the temp drop across the coil is really high. An easy way to roughly check this is to take a thermometer and look for a 20 degree drop between the return air and supply air. Anything higher than about a 25 degree difference would be considered too great. Check your filters, and shine a light into the filter area looking at the evaporator coil. They should be clean of dust and lint. Hope this helps solve your mystery. |
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Quoted:
The cool air blowing across the directional vanes is condensing. This would indicate one of two issues. 1) The air in the room is hot and humid, as room temp and RH% drops the condensation should stop. 2) The unit is low on refrigerant and the temp drop across the coil is really high. An easy way to roughly check this is to take a thermometer and look for a 20 degree drop between the return air and supply air. Anything higher than about a 25 degree difference would be considered too great. Check your filters, and shine a light into the filter area looking at the evaporator coil. They should be clean of dust and lint. Hope this helps solve your mystery. Have done all that. It's a new unit, been running since June with no issues. Missouri right now is in a record hot spell, and with record heat, the grass is still wet at noon in the direct sunlight, if that gives you an idea how humid it is. |
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Quoted:
Have done all that. It's a new unit, been running since June with no issues. Missouri right now is in a record hot spell, and with record heat, the grass is still wet at noon in the direct sunlight, if that gives you an idea how humid it is. Quoted:
Quoted:
The cool air blowing across the directional vanes is condensing. This would indicate one of two issues. 1) The air in the room is hot and humid, as room temp and RH% drops the condensation should stop. 2) The unit is low on refrigerant and the temp drop across the coil is really high. An easy way to roughly check this is to take a thermometer and look for a 20 degree drop between the return air and supply air. Anything higher than about a 25 degree difference would be considered too great. Check your filters, and shine a light into the filter area looking at the evaporator coil. They should be clean of dust and lint. Hope this helps solve your mystery. Have done all that. It's a new unit, been running since June with no issues. Missouri right now is in a record hot spell, and with record heat, the grass is still wet at noon in the direct sunlight, if that gives you an idea how humid it is. There you go then, real high RH%. Nothing will change until you drop the RH% in the house. |
| Newer window units dont have drains like the older ones, they use a slinger ring around the condenser fan blade that slings the water onto the condenser and evaporates it. More than likely your house is humid and the AC has cooled the vents to below the dew point causing condensation. |
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Quoted: Coil is probably frozen due to high heat/humidity/unit working too hard. Turn it off for a couple hours so the coil can defrost. Then run it again. Should be fine.. |
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I guess I should also add that this unit is only to cool the bedroom, while the house's central air keeps the rest of the house between 80 and 85 during most of the summer. Called the landlord and asked to have an AC repair person come look at the central air unit. He said it was working perfectly, just less than half the size it should be for the house.
I took the whole thing apart and checked everywhere. No drain holes clogged... no drain holes at all, apparently. And the water isn't coming from anywhere. It appears to be forming on the air outlet vanes. |
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Quoted:
I guess I should also add that this unit is only to cool the bedroom, while the house's central air keeps the rest of the house between 80 and 85 during most of the summer. Called the landlord and asked to have an AC repair person come look at the central air unit. He said it was working perfectly, just less than half the size it should be for the house. I took the whole thing apart and checked everywhere. No drain holes clogged... no drain holes at all, apparently. And the water isn't coming from anywhere. It appears to be forming on the air outlet vanes. This happens because the window unit has cooled them to a temperature below the dew point temperature inside your house. As ZW said above, the relative humidity in your house is too high. If your air conditioners can't remove that humidity then you might think about adding a dehumidifier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point |
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Newer units should not be tilted at all and should be level because the water is used to keep head pressure down.That's why no drain. OP make sure its level other wise the fan picks up to much water and pushes it out with the cold air and makes a mess. Read your owners manual. Edit to add- if you still getting water after making unit level you can put a small hole in the pan outside and let water out and then cover very small hole with aluminium tape when the humidity goes down. When I say small I mean the smallest drill bit that you have so it just's drips out slowly because you want water in the pan. |
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Quoted: Newer units should not be tilted at all and should be level because the water is used to keep head pressure down.That's why no drain. OP make sure its level other wise the fan picks up to much water and pushes it out with the cold air and makes a mess. Read your owners manual. Edit to add- if you still getting water after making unit level you can put a small hole in the pan outside and let water out and then cover very small hole with aluminium tape when the humidity goes down. When I say small I mean the smallest drill bit that you have so it just's drips out slowly because you want water in the pan. |
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In case anyone's still following this thread, it stopped dripping when the heat wave passed. I guess there was just too much humidity in the house, and it was condensing directly on the vanes.
If nothing else, I've learned that modern AC units spray the condensed water on the condenser coils to help cool them. That's neat. |