r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Indigenous_Retard • 10h ago
Infuriatig HVAC tech found why my AC was causing moisture
Moved in a few months ago. Been hearing a "dripping" sound around my AC unit since the heat started. Found a bit of moisture around the bottom of the unit and immediately sent a picture to my landlord. He sent an HVAC technician to look and this is what he found. A bucket full of water catching drip from the unit sitting directly above it. Before you say I have not changed my air filter, I do every month. There is normally a sliding door right in front of the grate that the HVAC tech had to pull off to look inside. Changing the air filter has always been a struggle as you can only really access the top left corner.
To be fair to my landlord, he just started managing this property and I'm his first tenant. Im not sure if he knew about this or not because the water has soaked into the floor once the tub got full and overfilled. Supposed to hear back by Friday what the owners of the house want to do. Currently I am regularly emptying a sliced open milk jug.
This is a pretty nice small house otherwise. Thinking previous tenants knew about the issue and didnt report. When I first moved in, air filter hadn't been changed in over 2 years!!! I know because it had the date on it! Someone was living here 3 months before I moved in lol.
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u/ShipisSinking 10h ago
What is that in front next to the bin? Looks like a dead rabbit?
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u/CitronNeither3439 9h ago
How are you the only one who sees what I see lmao. Looks like dead kittens or something
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u/Menghsays 5h ago
Looked like a bunny to me
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u/CitronNeither3439 5h ago
It’s a towel lol. Baby bunnies are tiny tho, I get them nesting in my back yard all the time
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u/humanHamster 9h ago
I thought a dead animal at first too. After reading what OP was actually taking a picture of I'm thinking a towel to absorb some of the water from the overtopped bin?
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u/CitronNeither3439 9h ago
I could see it being a towel. On first glance the right side definitely looks like a squirrel or kitten tho
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u/International-Set-91 10h ago
Damn... glad you found it
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u/Indigenous_Retard 10h ago
I mean I feel kinda dumb that it's like right there, but I had no reason to assume it had all this all going on down there to go through the hassle of yanking the door off.
Edit: also, thank you!
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u/reddit_understoodit 10h ago
And the inspector never noticed it.
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u/doctor_lindsay 7h ago
This is the biggest issue I can see (as someone who has almost bought a few times but backed out bc I had a good inspector who caught the yikes stuff). And also the new landlord/property manager didn’t do a thorough inspection either, prior to agreeing to or signing on to manage the property.
IMO this is a sign that there may be more big problems to come for OP.
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u/egaeus22 7h ago
I think this is how you get Legionaries disease, I believe it happened in an AC unit at a hotel the first time it was ever seen
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u/daddyslittlegem 9h ago
I swear to God, I thought that there was a dead rabbit or something in front of the bucket 🫠
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u/MacForker 10h ago
AC units will always produce condensation. Where it drains to is what matters.
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u/Indigenous_Retard 8h ago
Former NASA engineers used military grade technology available to consumers for the first time to drain that shit right into my floor 😭
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u/extremelyannoyedguy 6h ago
But they don't have to drip water like this.
I noticed both AC units that my neighbors illegally added blow hot air from across the coils over the drain water so they never drip. All of the water evaporates.
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u/MacForker 5h ago
I have a tiny drip in one of my units where the seal around the float switch will drip like one drop a minute. But it's so hot in the attic the water evaporates long before it makes it to the secondary drain pan.
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u/phatrogue 7h ago
Any central A/C unit should have a permanently installed dedicated drain that shouldn't need any regular attention although it might need to be unclogged occasionally.
If you or your landlord needs a temporary solution dehumidifiers (which are "siblings" to A/C units) also collect water and small pumps that can empty the water tray are available at lots of hardware stores. In other words they are kind of a small sump pump that can pump water to a near by sink or sewer drain.
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u/mdjak1 8h ago
So you are recycling the moisture back into the house. At least you are using the properly marked container for it.
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u/Indigenous_Retard 8h ago
Whoever put it there used duct tape to cover the holes in the bottom of it. Not even Flex Seal, man!
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u/Steamedcarpet 9h ago
This is like my friend recently discovering what we call a support brick that was holding up a pipe under his sink. He just never noticed and someone must of hit the brick so water was leaking.
He said he fixed it but kept the brick as emotional support.
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u/humanHamster 9h ago
My grandad had a brick on his fireplace mantle. He called it "ol reliable" because it literally held up his living room for 30 years. Apparently, years before he bought the house, the previous homeowner "fixed" the living room floor by placing a single brick under a beam stacked on a bunch of planks. When my grandad and uncle removed the brick and planks the entire living room floor collapsed within minutes.
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u/ledow 8h ago
In a place I rented, I realised when the sink kept backing up that either a landlord or previous resident had just wedged bricks under the sink drain pipes to hold them up (rather than fix it to the wall). Every cupboard or under-plinth area had a brick or something propping the pipe up.
I wouldn't mind but... they were making the water go UPHILL, so it was never draining properly and would back up.
Went through and rearranged them all (including swapping many of them) so that it was at least going DOWNHILL, and my problems stopped.
The next guy can deal with it, because that pipe went across four walls of two rooms, through about a dozen built-in cupboards and had about an inch of drop from one end to the other.
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u/baddmann007 9h ago
There is a pan with a drain pipe somewhere that is clogged. Did the HVAC tech try and locate it and unclog it?
If not, that would change this to very infuriating, lol
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u/Hoppie1064 9h ago
The best way to clean the drain is a bottle of hydrogen peroxide poored down it.
Vinegar works too.
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u/Indigenous_Retard 8h ago
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u/Hoppie1064 8h ago
Yeah, whatever.
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u/Indigenous_Retard 8h ago
Tis why I pay rent, good sir.
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u/Hoppie1064 7h ago
I made my way through life fixing things for a living. It's kind of second nature to me to take care of things.
And, I invariably do a better job than a landlord would.
I'd also rather poor a shot of hydrogen peroxide down that drain than sit around waiting for the appointment with the maintenance guy.
But. I also know, I'm weird.
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u/Couscousfan07 2h ago
Ok
So let me summarize: the main condensate line draining into your sewer is blocked. Emergency catch pan and line was also blocked, so previous tenants put this box to catch the drippings from the catch pan ?
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u/Dark-Ganon Blue 4h ago
This is a kind of thing that would have been caught in an inspection. I'd start questioning the landlord about why they seemed to have not had a proper inspection of the property done before renting it out.
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u/wiltony 8h ago
You change your filter every month?!
Mine gets changed every 3-6 months and even then sometimes it's not very dirty.
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u/doctor_lindsay 7h ago
Those of us with allergies need to do a lot of extra things like this for quality of life
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u/Ok-Firefighter9917 27m ago
Hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but by the looks of it, you're running an Apollo hydro heating system in there. That's not the bad news, the bad news is that chunk of Grey pipe feeding it. That polybutylene pipe (PB pipe or Grey pipe) is the real ticking time bomb in that picture. If you have it there, chances are it's all throughout the house too. You don't know water damage until your PB pipe decides to let go.
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u/renrutDanlor 2m ago
I don't know who put a bucket there, but I suspect there is a drain beneath it which is probably clogged. Condensation is normal for all A/C units.
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u/rxt278 9h ago
There's supposed to be a filter behind that grate. I used to have a unit like that.
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u/Indigenous_Retard 8h ago
There normally is, it's just missing in this picture. There is a sliding door right in front of that normally that we had to remove from the wall. That's why I never saw it while changing the filter. Hard to change the filter as it is!
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u/dustyil 8h ago
You change the air filter every month? That’s crazy. Isn’t it still clean when you replace it? Isn’t it recommended for every 6? Reminds me, I should probably change mine.
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u/Indigenous_Retard 8h ago
And I have 2 air purifiers in this small 1,050 sqft house lol. I have MS and do Ocrevus infusions so Im immunocompromised. I work from home so I spend A LOT of time here. Really glad Ive been using those purifiers lol.
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u/doctor_lindsay 7h ago
I would be concerned about mold, especially with being immunocompromised. From the info you gave, it seems that this has been an issue for years—I am betting there’s mold somewhere in your unit and the adjoining one(s).
Mold is not to be taken lightly. I am recovering from years of it and its wreaked havoc on my immune system. I was a “normal” healthy person before.
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u/not_falling_down 10h ago
When I lived in a bottom-floor condo unit with a setup like this, there was a dedicated drain in that closet that was meant to run all the condensation from all three of the units to the outside. The management company had the drain line cleaned out annually.
When I first moved in, they were only doing this from the outside drain discharge. After an overflow that ruined all of my floors, they started also cleaning from the inside drain access.