Archive for the ‘Home Repair’ Category

Call me “Mister Fixit”

We’ve been having some problems for awhile now with water dripping from a little spout under the eaves of our house. It’s actually non-stop, and results in a pretty big puddle on our deck. Thing is, it never used to happen, so it hinted at bigger problems elsewhere.

A bit of detective work was in order.

I went up to the attic (which was about 150 degrees in this summer heat) to check on the air-handler. A bit of background: we have 2 zone central air system. One furnace/air conditioner in the basement, one in the attic. The unit in the attic lies on its side, and there’s a large tin pan under it. A quick glance revealed the source of the drip – the pan was full of scummy water that was being fed through a pvc pipe to our eaves.

After a lot of searching, digging in fiberglass insulation, Googling, and 3 trips to Home Depot, I tracked the problem to a bad condensate pump in the basement of all places. I replaced the pump, got the whole thing working again.

I also managed to catch another issue in the nick of time. The basement air conditioner was also leaking condensate and it was dripping down into the electrical workings of the furnace. It was only a matter of time until something really bad came of that. After fixing the pump and draining both systems, I dried everything out, cut away the old leaky PVC, and completely rebuilt the basement system. It was a initiation into the art of cutting, sanding, priming, and gluing PVC.

It’s actually kind of fun, but man, that primer is nasty smelling.

So now both of our systems are running and draining properly, and the drip pan in the attic is dry and empty. I’m going to make a habit of checking these things yearly now. This is the sort of thing that the builders should’ve told you to keep track of, instead of basically handing you the keys and walking away.

Talking to our neighbor across the street, he had a similar issue happen with his system. Unfortunately for him, his drip pan failed and water leaked into the ceiling, ruining wood and drywall. I guess it cost him several thousand dollars to get that mess sorted out.

Fortunately we caught it before it became a huge issue like that. And yeah, I’m feeling a bit impressed with myself right about now.