Air conditioner repairman says this is normal?
 

There is always water around the air conditioner near the filter housing. This is located in a closed and cool closet in our garage. The repairmen have looked at it 3 different times and say its condensation/ normal. Our neighbors don’t seem to have this issue. The humidity in our home is typically 60% or higher. We keep the temperature around 75. What could be causing the moisture problem?

Are you sure that the humidity in your house is usually 60 percent or higher? I have several battery operated devices in my house, and the humidity has been between 39 and 44 percent for the past 24 hours. I maintain a temperature of 78 degrees, and the humidity is rarely above 50 percent. I would suggest that you buy a few devices to measure the humidity inside your house from Amazon or Home Depot and monitor your humidity.

It looks like you may have a small leak inside your air handler but I don't think that would have a major effect on the humidity in your entire house.

Is the water seeping out from the inside at the seam where the AC unit meets the wood?
Or the water forming on the outside of the units metal case and dripping down to the wood?

A carrier HVAC story:

After my new unit was checked and maintain after the first one-year free appointment,
the repair man added insulation blankets to my inside panels.

Reason being he said they should of did this at the time of installing the new unit.
He claims Carrier cuts back on their insulation at the factory, no charge to me.

Hope this helps.

Weather striping on the door(s) leading into the room. Outdoor humidity is seeping in the room causing the cold to condense into water. I had this problem at our Pennecamp home and by weather stripping the doors corrected the issue.

Get advice from someone else not the one telling you nothing is wrong. Obviously you have condensation issues.

I have the same issue. Water condenses on the metal cabinet and runs down. Humidity in the house has no impact as that humidity is handled by the AC and its drip pan. It must be the humidity in the closet. More insulation inside the cabinet would probably help so the metal cabinet wouldn't chill down but it's not a DIY project for me. Not worth the expense to have HVAC tech out to install any either. I just wipe it up.

BTW, I added 2 ft deep shelving beside the unit where the water heater tank was designed to go. We use it for a pantry and the closet being kept slightly cool is an advantage. We go into the closet at least once a day if not more.

Does not look normal to me....

make sure top and bottom locks are secured
 

Make sure you're locking both the upper and lower latches on the door into the unit. Check to make sure the compression strips are in good shape. The garages are hot, that hot air leaking into the HVAC closet will cause that condensation. I had been taking a short cut and only latching the top latch. As soon as I started latching both, the problem stopped.

I just had a problem with water making my filter wet and collecting around the bottom. It was a cracked drip pan that had to be replaced. I don’t think it’s normal to have water leaking onto your filter. Good luck!!

No, it’s not normal. Humid air is getting into your HVAC Closet. Make sure both doors stay closed. We ended up getting one of these (see photo) from Amazon as ours would occasionally open up.
This device keeps them closed.

This makes sense because the only source for water inside the air handling unit is the condensate dripping off of the evaporator coil.

The water seems to be seeping from the inside. The outside of the unit feels dry.

It seems to be seeping out from the inside where the unit meets the wood. The metal feels dry. The wood it damp.

It sounds like the drain pan under the evaporator coil has a crack or other type of leak. That is the only source of water inside the air handling unit. There is no water pipe that connects to the air handler. It is probably condensate water from the evaporator coil that is not draining through to the condensate drain pipe.

Your hvac system can sweat. I was getting a little mold on my filter. I had them put in a black light and haven’t had any mold since. I have quite a few friends that put this light in their hvac units to get rid of any mold

I agree with TommyT. Make sure your doors to the air handler closet are sealing. Turn on lights outside the door, go into the air handler closet and close the doors. Look around the edges of the doors for light. Where there's light, there's air getting in and needs to be sealed.

This. Common. I have worked on HVAC in the past. However, you can verify by placing a strip of paper around the unit about 2" from the bottom with a magic marker line drawn on it. Once the ink gets wet it will smear. If you get nothing on the paper, then look to the inside. The staining on your filter leads me to the inside.

You can remove the filter and get back into the box with a flashlight and look up inside. Condensation can occur just like on a window sill, but this on an ac unit seems really odd. Either you got major humidity issues in the house coming in by the unit which I think you would see all day long or it's the common drain issue.

If it's come from the inside, someone needs to take the cover off and look at the pan and coil. The pan could be cracked, misaligned, etc. Also you have to remember the air is rushing by the coil inside there at ~1200 CFM, some units have shields to direct the water into the pan.
Needs to be fixed, you will have a rotten wood in no time.

Having air handlers in the garage in a hot and humid environment cannot be good for these units. I would have to believe that they do not last as long as those air handlers in the house.

My air handler is in the garage and although you want to make sure your doors are closed, you are not supposed to get condensation like that outside the unit. You either have a cracked pan, partially clogged condensate drain or the filter door is leaking air. Those doors are terrible since they don’t make a good seal. You need to get that fixed.

Seal, Insulate and Mini-Split
 

We had a similar problem with condensation. It was so bad that water was running down the front of the unit and ended up corroding the switch on the electronic filter ($300 to replace).

Each technician that visited would add more insulation and seal the unit better. One even re-routed a wire and then plugged the hole where the wire had been. These action reduced the condensation but never eliminated it.

The ultimate fix was to install a mini-split in the garage. No condensation since.

(My guess is that the HVAC shouldn’t be in the garage in the first place.)

We had water on our filter and it was the coils leaking inside the air handler. Major job to replace the A coil. Same unit as yours, covered under waranty for parts on labor cost me around $1000

The coil doesn't have water in it. It has refrigerant. The only water is from the condensation that forms on the outside of the coil. So, replacing the coil because you have water on the filter doesn't make sense.

This won't happen down here, but up north, neighbor had water leaking around light fixture. I went up in the attic where our HVACs were located and found the return duct tube about 5' away was extremely low over that spot at the ceiling where the light was. Quickly realized the insulation was wet. The low spot sloshed with water. Went back to air handler and looked below A frame. The plenum where the returns all go to was filled with about 12" of crystal clear water and slowly overflowing down the lowest return duct tube. Took hose and blew out condensate line, sucked out water, and it seemed to stay dry according to neighbor. Probably 5 gallons collected in there. Of course had it just overflowed the pan, they would have quickly realized it.

Yours has to be an inside handler issue. IMO