Where the water is tells us what broke: a Gainesville leak map, attic to garage

Stop the damage: the first ten minutes

Set the thermostat to off before anything else. Every minute of run time condenses more water on the coil, and in a Gainesville July that can be a gallon or two an hour. If the unit is in the attic, put a bucket under the drip and, where it can be reached without risk, a towel or shallow pan in the attic under the cabinet. If it is in a garage or closet, pull anything stored near it off the floor. Then call, and read the section below that matches where the water showed up.

A stain on the ceiling: the attic unit

This is the Duckpond, Pleasant Street and Southeast district version, and it is also common in two-story homes across Northwest Gainesville where the handler lives above the second floor. Early-1900s houses had their systems retrofitted into attics, usually on a platform between the rafters, and the water has to travel a long way to get out. The failure chain runs: the primary drain clogs, usually with algae after a wet stretch; the primary pan overflows into the secondary pan; the secondary pan’s float switch should kill the system, but it was never wired, or it stuck, or the pan itself rusted through; and the water finds the ceiling.

The stain is brown because it has carried a decade of attic dust and rust with it. Plaster and heart pine do not forgive it.

A puddle on the garage floor: the garage unit

Haile Plantation, Blues Creek, Westchester and the Town of Tioga mostly keep their air handlers in the garage, which is the forgiving location. The water lands on concrete. The causes are the same clogged drain, a cracked or corroded primary pan, a drain trap that has lost its water seal and let air lock the line, or a cabinet sweating because the insulation inside has failed and the 72-degree-dew-point garage air is condensing on cold metal. One more: a float switch that trips, resets as the pan drains a little, and trips again, which looks like short cycling and is actually a leak.

Wet carpet at the hall closet, or a wet wall near campus

The 1970s and 1980s ranches that make up Gainesville’s largest housing cohort often have an upflow air handler in a hallway closet with a filter grille in the ceiling or the door. The drain runs through the slab or out through a wall, and when it clogs, the water comes under the closet door onto hallway carpet. Because the closet is small and the unit sits on a platform or the slab, a cracked pan or a sweating cabinet goes unnoticed until the carpet is wet and the closet smells. Closet units also have the flattest drain runs, so a slight sag holds standing water that breeds the algae that clogs it. In the student complexes near campus the same failure shows up as a wet wall below a horizontal handler, every August as systems that sat idle all summer restart with lines full of growth.

Call about a leak now

Why September is leak season here

Roughly 48 inches of rain fall on Gainesville annually, the bulk of it June through September, and a canopy covering nearly half the city keeps drain outlets shaded and damp. Algae grows fastest in warm, dark, wet pipes, which describes every condensate line in Alachua County by Labor Day, and eight-grain aquifer water scales any condensate pump.

The repair

A clogged drain: a shop vacuum on the outdoor end, a flush from the access tee, a check of trap and slope, a treatment in the pan. A failed pan: replacement, and in an attic a new secondary pan with a float switch we test by lifting. A sweating cabinet: insulation repair or, on an old unit, a conversation about its age. A missing float switch: added, because it is the cheapest insurance in the house.

Stopping the next leak before July

A drain flush at each maintenance visit, vinegar at the tee between them, a glance at the outdoor outlet after heavy rain, and a float switch on every attic and closet unit. For a Duckpond attic install, add a water-sensing alarm on the platform; it beats the ceiling stain by hours.