If your AC is leaking, it might be causing serious damage

You hear a noise from the closet that sounds like running water. It’s definitely water. That’s where your air conditioner’s main unit is located.

Your homeowners insurance policy requires you to protect the property from further damage, so if you can do anything to prevent more water from leaking, that would be great. If you can catch the problem before there’s any damage, even better!

What you can do if your AC is leaking

There are a couple of reasons your air conditioner might be leaking. Some you can resolve yourself and some you can’t. Hopefully we can point you in the right direction to prevent headaches with your AC and with your insurance company.

Maybe you’re a DIYer, or just a little bit handy. Maybe you’re not handy at all. Either way, you can do something. 

1) Turn the AC off at the thermostat, or if you have a Nest or other smart thermostat, you can do it right from your phone. Be ready. All of these steps are probably going to be happening as your home gets increasingly hotter, and it’s going to be inconvenient.

2) Grab a bucket and some towels. If you open the closet door and the water is still pouring, you want to be ready to catch it the best you can.

**Some people might not feel comfortable going beyond this step, and if you’re uncomfortable, feel free to call us and we can recommend a good local HVAC company. **

3) Get access to the AC unit and remove the filter. Once you can see into the unit, you’ll be able to figure out a little bit better what’s going on. 

Do you see ice inside the air handler?

If you see ice, this is a cause for concern and you’ll want to get in touch with an HVAC contractor right away. 

If the AC filter is really dirty and you don’t regularly change it, there might be a lot of dust in the unit, causing the coils to freeze up. This would be a good scenario because you might just need to have the inside cleaned, and this will be your cheapest fix. If this has been happening a long time, your compressor could be damaged. You might also have cracked coils or a refrigerant leak. 

If there’s no ice inside, you might be in luck!

4) If there’s no ice inside the unit, you may just have a clogged drain pipe. Over time, without any attention algae forms inside the air conditioner’s drain pipe, and once there’s enough of a build up, water can’t pass as fast as the HVAC unit removes humidity from the inside of your home. In that situation, it backs up and comes out of the drain pan. 

If you think this might be the case, you can take a shop vac to the exterior of the air conditioner’s drain pipe, and form a seal around it with tape, or even your hands, and suck out the pipe. At some point, when the pressure is high enough the algae will come out in a big clump, and you should be ready to turn your AC back on, and monitor for any future leaks. If there are no more leaks, congratulations! You’ve resolved the problem and saved some money on having to call out a contractor. You can prevent this from happening again by putting some bleach in the pipe once a month or so when you change the filter. 

Once you’ve stopped the leak, you have to evaluate your damages.

If this did resolve the problem, you should contact an insurance professional like VIP Adjusting and their team of public adjusters to evaluate your damages. We use the latest technologies to evaluate damage in your home and will use infrared cameras to determine what areas are wet, if there isn’t already visible damage. We may also refer an environmentalist or hygienist to test for mold because of algae and other stuff that was in the water that leaked. 

This water may have damaged laminate flooring or wood flooring in the area of the air handler. It’s less common, but it also may have damaged tile flooring. Depending on how much water leaked, you can easily have damage to the adjacent drywall, the most likely result.

If the last step did not solve the problem, you may need to have an HVAC contractor, or even possibly a plumber, perform more diagnostics on the situation. Your leak might be the result of a rusted drain pan that has holes or cracks in it if your HVAC unit is older, or you may have a break somewhere in the drain line between the air handler and the exterior drain. 

Regardless of which problem has caused your AC to leak and cause damage to your home, you’re going to need to document the source of the leak for your insurance company, and if you were lucky enough to be able to resolve the problem yourself, even though you’ve saved money, you may be behind the 8-ball when it comes to dealing with your insurance company.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation with a leak from your air conditioner and damage to your home, contact VIP Adjusting today for a free evaluation.

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If you have mold damage, you might need to make a claim for Additional Living Expenses