Leaking? What’s Causing the Leak in Your Mini-Split Indoor Unit?

Hi folks, Dave here, and today we're going to address, and hopefully solve, what to do when your mini-split is leaking. What leaking really means is that condensation from this indoor unit is dripping out onto the ground. Condensation happens if you have a humid day and something very cold, like an icy cold beverage in the summer: it's humid, and the water in the air will collect on the outside of the glass.

The same thing happens on the inside unit's coil of your mini-split. The water that's in the air within the room attaches to the coil, and theoretically it should be dripping down into the drain pan and draining out through the condensate hose. But if the condensate hose is blocked, or if something in the drain pan is blocked, or something else is going on, it's not going to flow.

So the first thing you probably want to do, and you've probably seen this in other videos on YouTube, is use a shop vac to suction out the condensate hose. The condensate hose is a semi-transparent hose running outside your house. It's not connected to anything; it just has water come out of it on humid days. Attach a shop vac to that, and if that's the problem, you can suck through whatever's blocking the drain and you're good.

Although, maybe you've solved the short-term cause, but the long-term cause may still be an issue, in which case you still might want to do what we're going to be looking at here. So, step by step: the tools you need are a Phillips screwdriver, or a drill with a Phillips bit, a flathead (even though this one's slightly bent, it should still work), and for this particular unit, a needle-nose pliers, that's what it's called.

So if you look right here, this is an Airspool unit, and I believe all mini-splits have this on the side: there are two little grooves on each side. Just pull those up, lift up, and then you're going to see three screws here. In this case, we're going to take those screws out first.

Then there are also screws behind the louver. This one, and I think most do, you push a little tab to release the middle part, and then you gently bend it down. There are two tabs here that hold it into place; the motor for the louver on this one is on the right-hand side. Set that aside, and then you'll see these little pieces of plastic down here that are covering the other screws.

Take a Phillips screwdriver, get in here, and wiggle it a little bit; same with the other one. That screw is already loose, so that's a gimme, but we'll do this screw too. Your work here is pretty much done, except there are also plastic tabs up on the top, so you need to stand up and try to get at those and get those loose as well.

We're maybe fifty percent of the way there. The next thing we need to deal with is this right here: it's a sensor that checks the temperature of the return air, so push that out of the way. You also have a Molex connector here for the display on the front of this unit, although maybe not all of them have that. There's one of these annoying little guards keeping you from completing your mission here, so take a screwdriver to get that tab off, set it aside, and squeeze to release the connector for the control panel. These were connected; they're not connected anymore.

So now everything should be theoretically disconnected, and you've got to clear this middle plastic tab on the bottom, so make sure you're watching what you're doing down there. Now this cover can be set aside, and the business end of the drain for this unit is off to the left here.

This is the coil, and when it's cold, and when the humidity is above roughly twenty percent, more and more water will be dripping from this icy cold coil down onto this piece of plastic, which is the drain pan. You can't really see what's going on with the drain pan because it's insulated, but it's there. There's a little metal connector here that needs to come off, because that's what's holding the condensate hose onto the drain pan, so we're going to move that out of the way.

This is where your needle-nose pliers comes in. You want to do this with needle-nose pliers instead of a screwdriver, because you don't want to poke a hole in this hose. If you solve one leak, you don't want to create another one from the repair itself.

Conveniently, it moved down to another groove, one lower, so that saved it from falling on the floor. So, how does this hose look? Does it look clear, or is there debris in there? By the way, this can also come off the wall here. Is this hose going downhill, or is it going uphill? If there's any place where the condensate hose runs uphill, that's going to be a problem, because water does not like to go uphill.

What will happen when you release this is a lot of water is going to fall on the ground, and you'll know the source of your problem is in this hose, because water isn't flowing somewhere along it. If water was flowing all the way through the hose, it would have gone outside by now. If this isn't the problem, you can check further. By the way, this attaches in four spots: there are two metal tabs up here, shaped like this. I'm pushing off one of them right now; it's still on the other one, and it's off the two on the bottom.

That's just to help you see what's going on. If this feels clear, don't jam it too hard, obviously, but if it feels clear and clean, the water was probably flowing quickly through this without an issue. If there's no debris right here at the drain of the drain pan, you're going to have to do some more investigative checking, which is beyond the scope of this video.

But anyway, that's pretty much it. To put all this back together, do everything in reverse. Thanks for watching.