A/C Drain Solution
 

Help.... for the life of me I cannot remember what I'm suppose to pour into the Air Conditioner drain once a year to keep it flushed out. I've done a search and saw many, many posts about Bleach and other things, but I'm looking for a tried and true measure.

What do you use and at what mixture ????

TIA

:posting:

1 cup of bleach to 2 gallons of water

not entirely true. different mixtures for different systems. i have a carrier infinty system and they told me to use white vinegar and never bleach.

That is a question for you A/C contractor. Some say bleach, some say vinegar and mine says clear water.

Bleach is out. Used to be a standard practice, but the manufacturers found that the bleach tends to corrode metal in the HVAC unit over time. I used Vinegar for a while, but Munn's rep tells me to use only hot water. But, since I have them service it every 6 Months, I let the service guy do it! He uses water under pressure from my hose bib!:thumbup:

Del Air told me one gallon of hot water every six months.

drain on ac
 

you can put your shop vac on the outside drain to suck it out as well.

I, too, was confused by the bleach vs. vinegar thing.
I found "AC Line" at Home Depot. It is a biodegradable liquid in a white eight-ounce bottle. Use it four times a year. AC guy said that it's fine.

I've always used hot water from the tap, enough til it flows good out the exit end of the pipe. That way I know I won't be harming anything!

Bill :)

I was told by two different HVAC Company Techs to not use bleach, but to use White Vinegar.

I believe we were told to only use hot water.

Munns told us hot water, once a month.

An addendum to my earlier response about using just hot tap water:

We used to have several house cats for a number of years (in OH) and found that we would get some amount of cat hair (from shedding) in the condensation drain pipe. If I didn't run hot water down the drain pipe on a fairly consistent/regular basis, it would clog due to the cat hair. Didn't have the best/tightest air filtration at our previous house and the air handler had a fairly small diameter drain pipe.......so there were several contributing factors to the clogging.

Moral: If you have pets that shed, you might have to do the drain cleaning on a more frequent basis.

Bill :)

Thanks
 

Thanks everyone for your reply... I really appreciate each one...

My a/c man told me hot water and dish soap.