hey guys welcome back to the channel so today I'm sitting in front of my air conditioning unit
because I've got to do some house maintenance this is not one of my usual car videos because
recently I had an issue with my air conditioner and it ended up leaking condensate all over the
first floor and messing up my ceiling so today I'm going to be installing a
drip pan and an extra safety switch and I'll show you guys what to do if you have the same
setup at your house or something similar or you don't have a safety switch at all so stay tuned
good
so my house has got this vertically mounted carrier unit right here as you can see it's
mounted upstairs on the second floor and it's got this return vent right underneath it and here
inside you'll see that I have a condensate drain right here that drains to the ground and it goes
to the first floor and outside the house and then you got your clean out right here which is the top
part that you actually pour vinegar down every couple of months just to clear out and clean out
it's on this side over here I've got the safety switch for the condensate and what happens is if
your condensate pan gets clogged up over here and doesn't drain it'll actually fill up the secondary
hose and then trigger the float switch in there to stop the unit on these types of units on the
vertically mounted units the condensate pan is actually a little you that goes around the unit
and then it drains out to here there's not much area or Surface for it to collect condensate and
it has to drain properly all the way on my unit I was having some weird issues I was actually
tripping this flow switch a couple times over the last few weeks I was wondering what was going
on because when I opened this thing up it was actually clear and there was nothing wrong with
it and I actually poured vinegar and I did all I needed to do to clean it out but then I ran it the
other day because we had a lot of people over and we were running this thing all day and it
was getting a lot of condensate and at the end of the day we noticed there was a leak or some water
coming from the ceiling and I realized this thing was overflowing this is the back side of the unit
here and I actually got water back here in the carpet I've been running a fan here for the last
two days with the carpet lifted up and the pad lifted up just to get some airflow underneath to
clean that out so that was a big mess right there and then my first floor you can see on the ceiling
there dripped down and I actually had to punch a hole in that tape to actually let it drain out so
it wouldn't damage any further on the ceiling I had to fix that little corner on the ceiling
and that little seam that I had to cut out right there but that's gonna be a pretty easy fix once
I get to it all I have to do is just plaster it re-tape it and then get the texture back in
and paint so the way the safety switch works is there's a little float right here once the water
gets up to a certain level it goes up to here and it actually stops the circuit right here and this
thing's this really simple open and closed circuit all it is is two wires it's actually in line with
the power for the thermostat so it's a pretty easy connection once you figure out the wires for your
thermostat so after this thing happened I had to come up with a solution just in case this thing
leaked again and my float switch in there fails on me like I did this time so what I did was I
was researching just getting a regular condensate Pan the size of my opening right here which is 30
inches wide and it's like 40 inches deep so I started looking on Amazon and I found a bunch
of different condensate pan options they were a little bit expensive they're from 60 to like
150 dollars for an actual AC condensate pan then I came across this I have a very similar thing
for my washer that's sitting under the washer just in case the washer ever leaks so I went ahead and
actually measured that thing and it was actually a perfect 30 inches that would fit right into this
hole these things are pretty much a commodity item and they're only 30 bucks so this thing
was like 30 or 31 dollars and it actually has the dimensions on it has an inner and an outer
diameter what I cared about was the outer diameter because I needed to actually fit inside of there
snugly and then not interfere with anything else so this one was the perfect size made in the USA
commodity item for thirty two dollars if you guys need something like this check out the links down
in the description in addition I picked up an additional safety switch this one's actually a
floater designed for a condensate pan and it's the same switch and the same brand as the one I have
in there since I have a float switch in there that's already doing the job all I have to do
is connect this in line in series with that one so it actually has two switches so both of these
have to be down for the unit to run so if either one of them trips high water the unit will shut
down the only thing I need to do for this one to fit it onto here since it's designed for a
metal condensate pan I have to actually drill two holes onto here so I can mount it into here now
to take a screw and just drill it straight to the plastic on the top edge of this to actually get it
to work and then once we do that I'll go ahead and wire this in line with soldering and heat shrink
if you guys don't already have a safety switch it's the easiest way is to actually access the
control part of the panel right here which is the top section of this unit and there's actually a
hole on the side over here that's already free that you can actually fish the wire through
that's what they did over here for my unit so my wire comes up the side here and there's actually
a hole up there that it goes right in perfectly as you can see we're inside the blower section
here and the control section and you can see all the jumbo mess of wiring that comes in here you
can see that wire off to the side there I was talking about that comes right through the unit
onto the spare hole and it goes right into here and it looks like it just connects to the 12 volt
power for the actual thermostat because it's the red wire with the fuse on it so if you ever have
issues or your unit stops running the first thing you always want to check is a safety switch if you
have one already if you don't have one this is how you wire it up so you just wire it to one
side with the red and the other side of the red goes to the other end right there so they just
wire nut it all together here it's pretty simple install so periodic maintenance on these units
so the condensate line is pretty simple you want to use just regular vinegar this is just regular
household vinegar get a funnel that you can just put into the condensate line and just pour like a
cup or two of vinegar in there every couple months to make sure that you clean out the condensate
line and keep it clear of any contaminants and build up that way you don't have a backup later
on to cause an issue of flooding this unit with my issue over the weekend this thing was really
clogged I usually use like a vacuum and I just use the blower side of it to blow the air out of here
but it wasn't dislodging anything so what I had to do is I actually had to get a little piece of
tube right here that fits right into the hole and then I had to use compressed air like actually 90
PSI of compressed air to actually unclog it and for a setup like this putting compressed air in
there you're going to need like a little piece of hose or something like this that fits snugly
on the inner diameter of the tube and can build some suction and some pressure because because
what happens if you just put air straight into here most of it is going to go back into
the unit and you're going to have a big old air gap and that's where all the air is going to go
all right so we're going to go ahead and just Mount this thing it's going to be
in the lowest corner that I feel that this thing is going to be at which is the corner
that all the water pulled up when I found it so I'm gonna put it right about there foreign
so that's pretty good there you might have to just bend it a little bit just to give it the angle
I still need to drill the hole to get the wire through outside the unit so I could
connect it up to the actual old switch over there to have it in line so we got it all
set up nicely now it's got enough where it won't overflow the pan when it trips
it which is perfect for what I need right here so we'll go ahead and put it straight into here
so once we're inside you can see it sits in there nice and snugly exactly 30 inches on
this particular duck which I think is a standard size duct it fits in here it doesn't cover the
whole thing but I don't need it to go all the way out here just because the opening up here
for my actual Inlet the water is going to drip right over here so it's still going
to be inside the pan same with the back way and then that back corner is where I think
everything drips too it flows too so that would fill up first if I ever have an accident again
so what I'm going to do now is pull the wire up to here I have to actually drill a hole off to
the side and then connect to the wire that's already there for the other safety switch
all right we got everything drilled through and fished up and out to the side right here now so
we're going to go ahead and do is just wire this up to the existing switch in line I'm
going to do heat shrink and solder since I'm OCD like that and then even that hole that I
drilled out I'm going to use some butyl glue and just kind of plug that hole up foreign
smoothly with the soldering got everything in there nicely so it looks nice and clean the only
problem I had was I ended up blowing that fuse I had up top because I didn't really disconnect
the power or anything and when I soldered it I think the 120 volt that goes through
the soldering iron ended up popping this so I looked up that fuse and it's actually a three
amp fuse not an e-fuse so I don't have any three amp fuses right now the only thing I have is a 5
amp so I'll just go ahead and use this it's not even the same type of fuse as this one this is
like your standard old school car few this is a newer style car fuse right here but it
should still plug into the Spades for now for a temporary fix until I could get a 3 amp all
right we got everything back up and running the air conditioner is back on the fuse that I put
in worked the last thing I want to do is go ahead and just test this what I'm going to do is go in
there push that float up if it distrust power to the thermostat then that's good that that thing
is working and I'll go ahead and check the other one too just make sure both circuits are working
tap that up and then I heard the unit stop so that's a good sign right there so the switch
works perfectly fine the ecobee is rebooting itself hey guys thanks for joining me all the
way to the end of this video on adding that extra layer of protection for my air handling
unit especially on the second floor if you guys don't already have a safety switch for your AC I
highly recommend adding one or adding two like I did especially if you have the design like I have
with the drip pans underneath you're depending on that little tube as the Overflow as you can see
my overflow tube failed on me on this occasion causing a bunch of damage to the ceiling that I
got to fix now if you guys found this video useful give it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed to
my channel to stay on top of all my different DIY videos go ahead and subscribe to our Channel
remember guys for all these different types of DIY videos if I can do it you guys can do it I
want to thank you for watching all the way to the end and I'll talk to you guys next time
foreign