Adventures in Home Ownership, Part I

Brian discovered a leak. Water was pooling under the cats' litterbox, in our basement. After ruling out a cat pee mis-fire, we discovered that the water was coming from underneath a wall, the other side of which was the crawl space where our heat pump (which is also an air conditioner) is installed.

That's when we realized that a water pipe leading to(? from?) the heat pump looked like this:



Water had been pooling there, and had obviously done so before, but this was the first time there was enough to creep into the cat-litter area, where we could see it. Hmm. No one had been in, or put anything in, the crawl space in a while (and the A/C had certainly been for long periods before), so the damage wasn't new... so why so much leaking now, and only now? For a while, we thought it was a water supply line (especially since it's insulated PVC pipe, typically used for supply lines). We figured somehow the heat pump used cold water in its air conditioning capacity. But, if that were the case, it would have leaked WAY more and way earlier in the summer.

So, after several hours of Googling ("How do air conditioners work?" "Cracked pipe leading to A/C" "Water line for heat pump"), I did what any new homeowner would do: I called my mom. Who immediately guessed it was condensation. Then I called my Uncle Rich, who confirmed that it was indeed the "condensate line" (hence the recent much-greater-output of water, as we've been in a heat wave and the A/C must be working extra hard, creating more condensation) and that it was no big deal, really, as long as the water was draining somewhere (it was, into a drain by our water heater). But, he said confidently, you could probably fix it yourself. And I did! I went out to the hardware store this morning and spent 5 minutes in the plumbing aisle (note: you get funny looks in hardware stores if you are 25 years old, and female, and have a baby strapped to your back, and are comparing different kinds of PVC cement). Then I spent 10 minutes at home, cutting out the broken section of pipe:


... cutting a new piece to fit, priming all the fittings, and gluing it all together. Total cost: $23. That includes a fancy-schmancy PVC cutting tool that I probably didn't really need, but is nice to have and I didn't mind the excuse to buy it (hey, come to think of it, that's another lesson learned from Rich!).

All done!