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Community and Q&A

Drip pan standing water

canada_deck | Posted in General Questions on

I’m a first-time owner of an central ducted AC system. My condensate line is working well. I’ve got an emergency float switch, a trap, and adequate slope. There is no slime build-up (it’s new) and it flows well. My air handler is sitting level in a horizontal configuration. However when I take off the side panel, I can see that there is some standing water in the internal drain pan. It looks like this is just a design issue. The drain ports are on the side of the pan and although they are very low, the bottom lip of the lowest port is still high enough that some water is always sitting in the pan. I don’t like the idea of water sitting there. It seems like it may get thrown by the fan onto the sound dampening duct liner that is in the supply plenum and that it will get gross in the fall when AC use starts to taper off and it just sits for weeks. After a bit of googling, it does seem like this is not entirely unusual. Is this common? Is there anything that can be done?

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Replies

  1. Expert Member
    Akos | | #1

    Tip the unit a bit so it drains. There is always some standing water, this is generally not a big issue as it evaporates after the cooling season.

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