EXPERIMENTAL condensate drain extension - thaw it first !

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abwjms
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EXPERIMENTAL condensate drain extension - thaw it first !

Post by abwjms »

Hesitant to post this because we don't have enough experience with it ourselves yet. Hopefully Thursday is the last really cold day in DE this season, so this is a topic to prep for next winter. This is experimental - if you're already thinking about solutions yourself, you may want to consider the below and figure it into your own design decisions (or blow it off - if you see problems with it, I'd be grateful for your views). Otherwise, this is not a proven solution and I offer no guarantees that it works.

Here's the extension to our condensate drain that we worked up:
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Since our old solid extension with an elbow froze solid, we though keeping it as open as possible was a good idea. We took a PVC tee with a 3/4" center and 1-1/4" ends, and used PVC glue to attach a trough made from about 6 inches of 1-1/4" pipe to one of the tee ends. We cut 135 degrees of the pipe circumference to form the trough. The open trough, the open upper end of the tee, and the original drain opening into the larger diameter tee all will hopefully allow drain water to flow away before it has a chance to freeze to anything. We built this inside, used PVC glue, applied finger pressure for a few minutes to set it, then let it cure inside for 3 hrs before installing it.

This is experimental, we had 1 night test time on it before we had to head home. In the morning there was a thin sliver of ice hanging off it, and a thin sliver in the end of the condensate pipe, but it seemed to be working. And achieving the other goal of keeping the drips off the AC bracket and preventing an ice mountain there.

No guarantees that this is the right answer, you need to follow your own gut sense with anything that you try.

Also, if your pipe is frozen, that is an acute threat that you need to address first before making any modifications to your pipe.
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