Water has started to pool around your central air conditioner’s inside unit and you have no idea why. First, you should turn off your air conditioner because this water could harm the electronic parts of your AC and cause water damage to your home. Then you should contact a professional AC repair person for help. If you want to understand the cause of this problem before calling a professional, read this article. Why water forms in a central air conditioner indoor unit Part of your air conditioner’s job is to pull humidity from the air. The inside unit’s blower pulls in hot, humid air through the return grille and over the inside unit’s cold evaporator coil (pictured above) to cool the air down. When that happens, condensation/droplets form on the evaporator coil. It’s just like when water droplets bead up on a glass of ice cold water on a hot summer day in Georgia. That water on the evaporator coil falls into a sloped drain pan and down a condensate drain line like a slip n’slide.

That drain line (usually a PVC pipe) either exits out the home (usually near the outside unit) or into your plumbing. OK, so now you have a general idea of how the water forms and the parts involved. If there’s an issue with any of these parts, that’s why the water is forming around the inside unit. Here are a few common problems that are causing the issue you’re having. Clogged condensate drain line or rusted condensate drain pan If the drain line gets clogged by dirt, insects, mold, or anything else, the water has nowhere to go but back into the home. (Some home’s have a secondary drain line but that may also be become clogged.) Use wet-dry vacuum to suck out the obstruction from the outdoor PVC condensate pipe. Also the root of the problem may be a dirty evaporator coil. The dirt will mix with the water and fall down into the pan, clogging the drain. Have a professional clean this coil annually as part of an annual AC maintenance visit. Also, the drain pan may be rusted through and is falling onto the floor and causing  damage to your home.

So you’ll need to replace that. Note: Your air conditioner may have a secondary drain pan to catch the water. can you charge home ac unitThis pan has a float switch that turns off your air conditioner to prevent water damage.black window ac unit If you have a newer air conditioner, the problem may be installation related. coleman rv a c unit partsAn improperly designed condensate trap will stop the condensate from draining. So all that water builds up in the drain pan and overflows into your home, causing water damage. You’ll need a professional to examine the condensate trap to see if it has been designed properly and fix it if necessary. Open the blower door of your inside AC unit. Is the evaporator coil covered in ice? When that frozen evaporator coil melts there may be so much water that it flows over the drain pan and then onto the floor.

There are 2 common causes of a frozen evaporator coil: To defrost the evaporator coil, turn the air conditioner off. Then turn the blower from “auto” to “on.” The fan should melt the ice slowly enough for the drain pan to handle all the water. In the meantime, you should call a professional AC repairman to check your air conditioner to make sure it’s is working properly and ensure nothing was damaged. Just a few of many issues… There are other causes of water pooling around an inside air conditioning unit, but these are some of the most common.Contact us online or call us at (770) 443-1821. Did you like this article? Sign up for our newsletter to get more DIY how-to articles and money-saving tips sent to your straight to your inbox. Ragsdale Heating, Plumbing and Air has been serving Dallas, Powder Springs, Acworth, Douglasville, Rockmart and the metro Atlanta area for over 20 years. Contact us online for more information on how we can help you.

Air conditioners and refrigerators work the same way. Instead of cooling just the small, insulated space inside of a refrigerator, an air conditioner cools a room, a whole house, or an entire business. Air conditioners use chemicals that easily convert from a gas to a liquid and back again. This chemical is used to transfer heat from the air inside of a home to the outside air. The machine has three main parts. They are a compressor, a condenser and an evaporator. The compressor and condenser are usually located on the outside air portion of the air conditioner. The evaporator is located on the inside the house, sometimes as part of a furnace. That's the part that heats your house. The working fluid arrives at the compressor as a cool, low-pressure gas. The compressor squeezes the fluid. This packs the molecule of the fluid closer together. The closer the molecules are together, the higher its energy and its temperature. The working fluid leaves the compressor as a hot, high pressure gas and flows into the condenser.

If you looked at the air conditioner part outside a house, look for the part that has metal fins all around. The fins act just like a radiator in a car and helps the heat go away, or dissipate, more quickly. When the working fluid leaves the condenser, its temperature is much cooler and it has changed from a gas to a liquid under high pressure. The liquid goes into the evaporator through a very tiny, narrow hole. On the other side, the liquid's pressure drops. When it does it begins to evaporate into a gas. As the liquid changes to gas and evaporates, it extracts heat from the air around it. The heat in the air is needed to separate the molecules of the fluid from a liquid to a gas. The evaporator also has metal fins to help in exchange the thermal energy with the surrounding air. By the time the working fluid leaves the evaporator, it is a cool, low pressure gas. It then returns to the compressor to begin its trip all over again. Connected to the evaporator is a fan that circulates the air inside the house to blow across the evaporator fins.

Hot air is lighter than cold air, so the hot air in the room rises to the top of a room. There is a vent there where air is sucked into the air conditioner and goes down ducts. The hot air is used to cool the gas in the evaporator. As the heat is removed from the air, the air is cooled. It is then blown into the house through other ducts usually at the floor level. This continues over and over and over until the room reaches the temperature you want the room cooled to. The thermostat senses that the temperature has reached the right setting and turns off the air conditioner. As the room warms up, the thermostat turns the air conditioner back on until the room reaches the temperature. Imagine that you took an air conditioner and flipped it around so that the hot coils were on the inside and the cold coils were on the outside. Then you would have a heater. It turns out that this heater works extremely well. Rather than burning a fuel, what it is doing is "moving heat." A heat pump is an air conditioner that contains a valve that lets it switch between "air conditioner" and "heater."