Friends, family and customers – I can’t tell you how much I have thought about this situation this week. How to get the word out to all of you to prevent this from happening to you.  Every year during the summer I try to post something to warn you guys so that the disastrous does not happen to you.  Unfortunately, it happened this week to one of our customers.  I got the call and you could hear the frustration and a little fear in her voice. She proceeded to tell me they just got back from a weeklong vacation and she thought the upstairs smelled musty, but did not investigate.  Then an hour later her child told her “mom the hall and bathroom are wet upstairs”.  Then she noticed in the kitchen the ceiling was wet and starting to fall.  The insurance company and restoration company had to be called.  This is the worst of the worst for this AC condensate situation we deal with every summer.

The damage could be small or in this case pretty darn bad. Carpet, hardwood floor, vanity, ceiling, dry wall all kinds of damage can happen from a stopped up AC line.  Recently I have started to use the comparison to the late and famous Houstonian Marvin Zindler —-Slime in the ice machine.

This same type of slime is what builds up and eventually clogs up your sink drain that is tied into your AC unit. The condensate from the AC drips to this drain.  The ice cold condensate travels through the hot pipes of the attic and walls festering and growing into your very own science project in your pipes.  Eventually growing to completely stop up the drain.  Does the AC stop?….Do you turn off the AC to stop the water from building up?  Unfortunately, the answer in the heat of the summer in Spring, TX is NO!!

How can you prevent this? Poor bleach down the AC drain line, generally there should be a tee installed on the drain to do this, in your attic once a month starting in May through September.  It could save you thousands of dollars in repairs from damage if flooding occurs.  If you do not have access to the line in this way don’t hesitate to give us a call and we can install one for you.

Another thing you can do is check those upstairs bathroom lavatory sinks to see how quickly or slowly they are draining. If they are draining slow give us a call to unstop them before it is too late.