Our basement floor was flooded and water was pouring out of our 1 year old A/C unit in the basement(house is 20 years old but we just replaced the A/C unit last year). We tested the drain line and it seems to be clogged. :eek: The AC condensate drains into a closed system of a black rubber tube and disappears into the basement subflooring. There is no secondary drain connected and no place else we can see that we could even drain it to. Even after running a snake 15+ feet into the drain tube the water only drained a few inches. We have no idea where the tube goes to or what to do now. We are on a septic system but we aren't sure if it drains into that or into some separate underground pit? There isn't any smell to indicate it is connected to the sewer but we don't see any evidence of a drain outlet outside anywhere. Do we call a plumber or someone else? :confused:

It is possible that the tubing just goes down under the floor and the condensate is expected to dissipate under the floor, or work its way to any foundation drains you have. If you can't locate any of your drains to repipe it to, you may have to buy a condensate pump to pump it up and through the basement wall where it will drain away from the house. The volume of the condensate shouldn't be enough to bother things too much. I do think it violates code to pipe it to a city sanitary sewer.

I do find myself asking if it worked the way it is for the old A/C, why doesn't it work with the new?

Fyi-Since we are currently collecting the condensate in a 5 gallon bucket we see just how much water there is... last night between midnight and about 5am we collected almost 5 gallons of water! I plan to call a plumber tomorrow and hopefully they can figure out what the problem is. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by aem22192

Our basement floor was flooded and water was pouring out of our 1 year old A/C unit in the basement(house is 20 years old but we just replaced the A/C unit last year). We tested the drain line and it seems to be clogged. :eek: The AC condensate drains into a closed system of a black rubber tube and disappears into the basement subflooring. There is no secondary drain connected and no place else we can see that we could even drain it to. Even after running a snake 15+ feet into the drain tube the water only drained a few inches. We have no idea where the tube goes to or what to do now. we are on a septic system but we aren't sure if it drains into that or into some separate underground pit? There isn't any smell to indicate it is connected to the sewer but we don't see any evidence of a drain outlet outside anywhere. Do we call a plumber or someone else? :confused:

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In my area we run our AC condensate lines out of 3/4" PVC and terminate them outside the house to drip on the ground. It's illegal to connect condensate lines, storm drains or roof leaders to a sewer line. AC condensate lines grow a kind of jelly in them and stop up. When that happens we clear the line out by shooting compressed air through the line and then closing off the end, filling the line up with bleach and letting it set for a few hours and then blowing it out again. Hope this helps with your problem. Good luck, Tom

A condensate pump will do the job for you. That's what I had to do since there was no other way to get the water outside. Hartell sells a good condensate pump... www.hartell.com (at least that's what my AC guy told me). If it's in your basement I'm sure there's an easy way to run some pvc to the outside

Tom

YouTube - TheMightyPump's Channel
Acdrainpump.com

Joe Cool,
You are responding to a 5 year old thread that's dead. Please look in the upper left hand corner for the date. Thanks, Tom