When your air conditioning unit fails to keep your house cool or emits odors of mold or mildew, you need to check its drain lines to find out if they are clogged. Clogged drain lines disrupt your unit’s normal function and contribute to water damage in and around your home. You can unclog your drain lines for an outside AC unit by following some simple steps or by hiring an experienced Shawnee air conditioning repair service to clean them out for you.
Inspect Your Air Conditioning Unit’s Drain Pan
Your first step when unclogging the drain lines in your AC unit should involve checking its drain pan. If you see water standing in the drain pan, you can assume the drain lines are clogged. You will need to soak up this water with towels or a shop vacuum to prevent mold from growing in and around your AC unit.
Spray Out the Drain Hoses
After you dry the standing water in the drain pan, you can use your garden hose to force out any clogs in the drain lines of your outside AC unit. Before you use your outside garden hose to spray out any clogs, you should remove any debris in the openings and ends of the lines. These parts of the line might have dirt, grass clippings, and other debris in them.
After you remove the debris, you can then use your garden hose to spray out clogs that are located deeper within the drain lines. If the force of the water from the garden hose is not enough to force out the clogs, you may have to use a plumber’s snake. You can run the snake down the drain lines to reach the clogs and force them out through the other end.
Clean Out the Drain Lines
After you remove the clogs from the inside of the drain lines, you can clean them out to remove any remaining debris or residue on ends or insides like grease or dirt. To clean them out, you can use a commercial cleaner that you can buy at the local grocery or big box store. You should buy one that is safe enough to use on PVC pipes to ensure your drain lines do not corrode or rust.
You can also make your own drain line cleaning solution by mixing together equal parts of vinegar and water. You can also use a mild detergent, such as dish soap to remove grease, dirt, dust, and other residues that can get inside the drain lines and cause future clogs.
Reattach the Lines
The last step for cleaning out the drain lines in your AC unit should involve reattaching them to the unit. You need to ensure they are tightly screwed back on and will not leak any water.
Call a Professional Air Conditioning Service Company
All of these tasks can be more than you can handle on your own. You may not even know where the drain lines are located. You also might lack the tools to take them apart and remove the clogs in them.
Instead of trying to remove the clogs on your own, you can call a professional air conditioning service company in Shawnee. The service technicians know where to locate the drain lines and how to remove them and look inside of them for clogs.
They also have professional equipment, such as plumbing snakes and scopes, that they can run through the drain lines to find and clean out any clogs. They may also use wet vacs to suction out the clogs, as well as dry up standing water in the drain pan to ensure your AC unit functions properly.
The drain lines in your air conditioning unit can become clogged and prevent your home from being cooled properly during the hot Kansas summers. It is vital that you remove the clogs to ensure the proper function of your unit and the coolness and comfort of your home.
You can call a professional AC service company to handle this complex job for you. Air Care Heating & Cooling in Shawnee offers this important service, as well as other vital residential services, such as preventative AC and heater maintenance and residential tankless water heater installation, for your home. Contact Air Care Heating & Cooling in Shawnee to learn more or request drain clog cleaning services today!
