Plumbers in Shreveport, LA

The hardest-working drain in the house

In a climate where cooling runs for the best part of the year, there is a small pipe doing a great deal of unnoticed work.

An air conditioning system does not only cool air, it dries it. All that moisture condenses on the coil and has to go somewhere, and where it goes is a small-bore condensate drain line running from the indoor unit to somewhere outside.

Over a long season, that line accumulates algae and debris. It is dark, permanently damp and warm, which is ideal for exactly that.

When it blocks, the water has nowhere to go. It backs up, fills the pan under the unit, overflows, and comes through the ceiling below.

The homeowner sees a spreading stain and reasonably concludes a pipe has burst. It has not. A drain has blocked, and it was preventable.

The warning system you already have

Most installations include something almost nobody knows about, and it is worth understanding because it is trying to tell you things.

Under the indoor unit there is usually a secondary drain pan, and that pan has its own overflow outlet. That outlet is deliberately routed to somewhere visible, very often outside under an eave or above a window.

The entire purpose of putting it somewhere conspicuous is so that when the primary drain blocks and the pan starts catching water, you see it dripping outside before the ceiling finds out.

So if you have ever noticed water dripping from an odd small pipe outside the house on a hot day and wondered what it was, that was your early warning. It means the primary condensate line has blocked and needs clearing.

Prevention is straightforward: flush the line before the cooling season, and use a treatment that discourages growth inside it. Doing that once a year costs very little against a ceiling repair.

Slab leaks and the meter

Most housing here sits on a slab, which means supply pipework runs in or beneath concrete where nothing is visible.

A leak there produces no sign at all until it has been running long enough to warm a floor, crack a tile, or make a room smell. So the meter, not observation, is what finds it early.

Everything off, including irrigation and the ice maker. Note the reading. Come back an hour later without using water. A changed figure means water is escaping.

When one is confirmed, the decision between repairing and rerouting follows a simple rule. A first failure in an otherwise sound line is worth repairing where it failed. A second failure on the same run means the pipe is going along its length, and every future leak carries the same cost of opening and reinstating a floor. At that point running new pipe overhead, where it can be reached, is usually both cheaper across a few years and final.

Ground that moves every year

The red clay here swells when it takes water and shrinks hard through a dry summer. You can see it in August when cracks open across yards.

A slab sits on that ground and moves with it. The copper cast into the slab moves too, and the hot lines, running warmer and cycling harder, are the ones that give way first.

Keeping moisture around the foundation reasonably consistent through a dry spell reduces the movement, but the important word is consistent rather than plentiful.

Damage comes from differential movement, one part of the ground behaving differently from the part beside it. Watering the side of the house that happens to have a tap, and leaving the rest, creates exactly the unevenness you were trying to avoid. A soaker hose at a steady distance all the way round, run moderately, is the approach that actually helps.