Heat Pump Repair in Johnson City, TN Helps Stop a Basement From Continuing to Flood

Received a call from an existing customer in Johnson City, TN in need of a heat pump repair. Her 5-year-old heat pump was leaking water into her basement floor, but was cooling ok. She stated that she had gallons of water in the floor. We advised her to turn the unit off and that we would come over and take a look.

When we arrived, the unit was still in cooling mode. The customer’s tenant did not want to go without cooling. We always advise customers if a unit is not working or is leaking water, to shut it down immediately. We realized that her drain line was clogged on the indoor unit. This customer had not done a single maintenance since another company had installed it 5 years ago. These newer all aluminum coils seem to get clogged drain lines way faster than the older copper coils used to. The aluminum does not have the anti-microbial properties that copper has, so drains clog much quicker without maintenance.

We were able to suck the water from the indoor pan with a shop vac and clean the zoogleal growth from the pan as well. We disconnected the condensate pump and sucked the slime and water from the pump as well. We cleaned the inside of the condensate pump with an all-purpose cleaner and removed the slime from the intake on the pump as well. We snaked the p-trap and drain line to help free up any stuck debris. We put our shop vac on the drain line and sucked the p-trap and drain line clear. We reassembled the condensate pump and installed the drain line back into place.

Then, we opened the return grille on the return duct and found that there was water sitting inside the return plenum at the bottom. We pulled about 8 gallons of water from the insulated return plenum. We poured 1 gallon of foaming drain cleaner down the drain line and into the condensate pump and allowed the cleaner to be discharged to the outside. Then, we poured 3 gallons of enzyme treated water down the drain line as well and allowed it to be discharged to the outside in order to further flush the lines and also to prime the p-trap. We sucked the water from the basement floor and dried the floor with towels to help the customer clean up the mess they had on their hands.

This unit did not have an emergency drain pan and did not have any water protection devices. We advised the customer once again that the condensate pump float switch needs to be wired into the unit in order to shut the unit down if the pump fails or clogs and we also advised a minimum of 1 float switch in the drain line combined with a wet switch as a redundant back-up and to add protection if the unit ices up in the future. As the ice melts from the coil, it will not allow the water to enter the drain, but instead will drip down into the return plenum and the wet switch would detect the water dripping from the return plenum and shut the unit down.

Personally, we like to see a float switch in the main drain line, a float switch in the auxiliary drain line, the condensate pump float switch wired in, a wet switch, and if this unit had an emergency drain pan a float switch on it as well to further protect the home from water damage. If this unit had float protection devices or a wet switch the basement would not have been covered in water and the return plenum insulation would not have been holding so much water.

We put the unit back together and fired the unit in cooling mode. We also noticed that the p-trap had been sweating and had stained the floor. Since we were already there, we grabbed some Armaflex insulation from the van and insulated the p-trap as a courtesy to prevent nuisance sweating in the future. We performed a temperature split test on the unit and confirmed that we were cooling again. If you live within our service area of Northeast Tennessee and are in need of a heat pump repair, please feel free to reach out to us. Stay safe and best wishes.

Location: Johnson City, TN