Puddle, pan or ceiling stain: three Live Oak water leaks and the well water behind two of them

Where the water comes from in the first place

On a muggy Live Oak afternoon an air conditioner pulls ten to twenty gallons of water out of the air in a house and sends it down a small PVC line to the outside or a drain. That line, the pan under the coil and the float switch that guards them are the whole system. When any of them fails, the water comes out somewhere you can see it. Three ways that happens here.

Case one: a puddle at the closet unit downtown

A 1930s frame house a few blocks from the courthouse square, air handler in a hall closet, on city water. Water on the wood floor in front of the closet door. The cause: the condensate line had grown a plug of algae at the trap and the pan overflowed. No float switch; the house never had one. Fix: clear and flush the line, add a cleanout tee and a float switch, and check the floor for damage. On city water this is an algae problem and a yearly flush keeps it away.

Case two: an overflowing pan under a package unit’s coil, on a well

A manufactured home near O’Brien, on a private well like most of the county. Water pooling under the home at the duct connection and a sulfur smell near the unit. The drain line, cut open, showed what the photograph on this page shows: a crust of iron and sulfur scale narrowing a three-quarter-inch pipe to a pencil’s width. The water backed up through the coil compartment and into the belly duct. Fix: replace the drain line, treat it, add a cleanout and a float switch, dry and repair the belly insulation. Prevention: a treatment schedule and a flush at every maintenance visit, because that scale will come back.

Case three: a brown stain on a River Woods ceiling

A 1998 two-story with the air handler in the attic over the hallway. The stain appeared on a Sunday after a week of afternoon storms. The primary drain had scaled from well water; the secondary pan under the unit had a float switch, but the switch had been wired wrong by a previous company and never shut anything off. Water ran over the pan edge onto the drywall. Fix: new drain, new trap with a cleanout, the float switch rewired and tested by actually filling the pan, insulation replaced, and a drywall contractor’s number for the ceiling. We also raised the question of moving the unit to the garage at the next replacement.

The first hour, whichever case you have

1. Turn the system off at the thermostat.
2. Put a pan or towels under the drip and move anything that will stain.
3. If you can see the drain line’s outdoor end, look for water. None coming out while the pan is full means a clog.
4. If you can reach a cleanout, pull the cap and let it drain into a bucket. A wet-dry vacuum at the outdoor end will often pull a plug through.
5. Do not pour bleach down an unknown line; on some installs it ends up in the pan or on the coil.
6. Call, and tell us which case you have and whether the house is on a well.

Call about a water leak

What we do at the house

Find the water’s path first, because a frozen coil, a sweating line set and a leaking cabinet all mimic a drain failure. Then clear or replace the drain, rebuild the trap with a cleanout, confirm the slope, install or test the float switch by filling the pan until it trips, and check the secondary pan and its drain if the unit is in an attic. On well-water houses we add a treatment schedule. Then we look at what the water touched: belly insulation, subfloor, drywall, closet floor.

Why this is a Suwannee County problem more than most

Nearly every home outside the city limits is on a private well in the Floridan aquifer, and the water carries iron, hardness and hydrogen sulfide. That chemistry scales drain lines, pans and traps in a way algae alone never does. Combine it with four muggy months of heavy condensate, attic air handlers in the 1990s subdivisions, belly ducts under manufactured homes, and a drain line that has never seen a cleanout, and the leak is only a question of which summer.