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| Base of Air Conditioner lacks Evaporative Water Collection Pan |
Every year for the past five years during the summer the same thing happens at this community group home: the air conditioner (A/C) begins to leak water and there is water damage in various parts of the house, but especially downstairs in the dining room, sometimes for weeks at a time.
The staff coordinator calls the A/C service van and usually the repair person goes up to the floor above where the A/C closet is, and he does the same thing. He takes the dry-vaccuum and hoses the water out from the base of the air conditioner. As seen above the air conditioner does have evaporative coils and it causes moisture to collect, quite a bit of it evidently, and it is supposed to feed from the white PVC drain pipe to a vertical collection pipe into a system that drains out of the house.
But as this resident has learned (from being curious over the years about the ever-leaking A/C and appreciating the inconvenience), the A/C should have a secondary collection system of some type as most do, with another evaporative collection pan at the base and including an overflow drain to the vertical drainage collection system.
Well it doesn't. As pictured above, when the bottom grate is removed it is just a padded insulated box that feeds directly into the rest of the duct system. But because of the inefficiency of the collection system directly below the evaporative coils in the A/C, there is so much water that the box bottom becomes saturated (although the insulation does have minimal waterproofing) and the overflow carries out into the duct systems towards various rooms.
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| Replaced the air filter, but the box bottom does not drain |
To add insult to injury the repair person retorted to this resident that she was not qualified to comment or make suggestions, since she was not a certified technician, as he stood there and did the usual thing: use the dry-vacuum to hose it out, sometimes for an hour at least. Little did he know that the resident had done the same thing the night before at least twice because of the rapidly filling pool. Neither he nor the staff recognized this resident's efforts of course. (They would rather consult their organizational attorney to find out how to keep the residents underinformed, keep them at bay, minimize their concerns, send them warning letters, or even try to evict them).
He asked and berated, "Do you have an Air-conditioner Certification? No! You don't! And anybody can post a video on YouTube! It's hardly credible! You don't know anything! That standing water is there for recirculation! Everything is supposed to go back to recirculation!"
"So if everything is supposed to go back for recirculation, why are the ducts leaking and the ceiling of the dining room leaking?" the resident asked.
The A/C ever-repair person fumed at me and looked like he was going to explode! Of course, such an obese heavy-set man might even have a heart-attack from such hard cross-questioning!
"You don't know anything! That water is meant to recirculate!"
Okay, I think, sure we have atmospheric climate air recirculation. It's just all perfectly normal!
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| Usually this is just the start of the leak in the dining room |
So while this A/C guy is gaslighting me, assuring that I know absolutely nothing about his business, which is every year to come to suck dry the saturated base of the A/C a few times a month, and then the organization can send out its maintenance crew to patch up and repaint the ceiling, the staff are giving me the cold shoulder. It is because I wrote them an email sharing my concern that the box needs a metal collection pan and a drainage pipe to the vertical PVC collection pipe. It's a relatively simple fix, I assured them. So the next business morning (the leak began on the weekend), staff were in meeting all morning, and too busy to travel upstairs, and deliberately tried to brush off this resident repeatedly. They think it will legally embroil them if they visit the A/C closet with a resident!
In fact any kind of collection system would do, even a PVC lined box with a horizontal drain pipe would do. Those evaporation coil pans at the base of almost every air conditioner and boiler have a function, which is to catch and drain emergency overflow, even if the thermostat malfunctions.
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| This is the main weepage pipe from the evaporative coil inside the A/C |
Honestly, I don't expect that the staff in the house have anything civil to respond to me, but if anything, will do what they usually do, which is expect us to not talk, while they figuratively sweep the problem under the rug. Seriously, there was a kitchen graywater leak under the sink (kitchen drain) for over a year, and it had grown worse over that time period, when finally this resident took everything out from underneath the sink cabinet, placed water collection bins, and alerted the staff. It took a couple more months till it was finally fixed. In the meantime, this resident drained the bucket every day, up to several times a day. Some other residents helped, but prior to this, the area under the sink, the plywood undercabinet was left wet, moist, and rotting. (This resident would have addressed the matter sooner, but there were some very aggressive and abusive residents who would chase her out of the kitchen). (You would never believe that the staff also use this very same kitchen daily to fix their lunch!)
This is why to staff's chagrin, the resident always addresses the email to the permanent supportive housing director as well. Since that director is on vacation, the staff don't need to direct their sincere civil attention to the problem until she returns, and hopefully decides that ever-repair is not the same as a full-solution. And of course maybe the staff are worried that it is this resident wanting to play drama-queen, or making it about personality-contest. Rest assured. There are other residents with renumerative starring roles here, calling 9-1-1 about imaginary invasions of the house.
No, this is about having a permanent source of mold spreading from the base of the A/C duct box to the rest of the duct system. Think Legionnaire's disease, for starters. Even the filter starts molding prematurely and that mold does spread easily through the duct system into every single room.
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| Musty moldy filter and dirty water collect directly underneath the A/C unit |
Again, this resident is reminded of the jeers of the A/C person or innuendos, "You are not paid to do anything here, I am! You have no authority here! We can't do anything without additional money!"
Exactly! Jesus was not paid to do his type of ministry either, nor his apostles. We are not charging God for the air we breathe, the water we drink, even if the capitalists of the world are hoping to eventually make that chargeable monetarily as well. There is no renumeration for my volunteer work here or in the garden or anywhere this resident may be in sharing of free useful good information.
In the meantime, the resident wants to thank the new innovative systems in development around the world. While the urban AI version can feel invasive, the system of social-credit and points earned for volunteer work used by the People's Republic of China should be an option for poor people here in the United States. Think about coupons and how they are used for discounted groceries or dining out. Wouldn't that be nice to rack up some free points to use for travel or car rental?
And insofar as being able to hold accountable, investigate, communicate, disclose, express, Google has also been extremely helpful. All these A/C experts sharing their expertise are not sharing in order to cheat home-owners or discourage them from taking care of their unit or disempowering them from developing DIY fixes for a leaky unit. In fact, on the contrary, they usually have so much business in the summer that they are hoping that customers can learn to pinpoint the problem better. Some of them are even sharing theory and not just practice, such as GrayFurnaceMan, HVAC School, and Skill Builder. Because of the CEUs this resident has to undertake for civil engineering recertification, she is always alert to these sorts of websites. And this is even before we dig into GoogleScholar or GoogleBooks and check out the free chapters on pro-environmental climate-protective presidential hopefuls. These are the types of publishers who have a noble-cast of character in this world, and who are not here on earth to merely manipulate people and things for their own materialist gain.
In the past, a long time ago, this resident had a best friend who took her on a journey to Portugual where we visited a great number of ancient churches. Once at dusk we came upon a service in process and my friend happened to glance up at the ceiling and noticed a crack in the vaulted ceiling. It was a spreading type of crack, but he wouldn't wait. Instead, he whisked us out of the church in a hurry. At the time, I sort of chuckled about the rush, but actually today, it is a sobering reminder of when one is in an endangered sect within the church. There is a church nearby and it would seem as if all Catholic churches are the same, however, this one is always under semi-renovation. It used to not be so, then it became so after the ascencion of a new vicar. The painting is never finished, the stations of the cross are alway partly covered, the statues are always being moved about, the talk is always of what else needs to be paid for, and once one thing is done, something else must be fixed. Most people do not attend church to be forced to notice such matters, but indeed it is the case here. That was this resident's impression, a church with a cracked ceiling, so to speak. And so there, the parishioners will be more worried about their pocketbook, a sermon about the distant past, a funneling to not ask pertinent questions about relevant matters, but to be willing to absorb as gospel truth the weight of the pastor's viewpoints. No wonder pride and arrogance is such a problem today, when people so hypocritically are encouraged to base their authority solely on materialism, title, and figurative glory.
Anyway, it does no good to raise the issue about the Ever-Repair A/C drainage problem, as the staff always presume that what they will do is invariably correct and does not need resident input. If we do provide input, there is likely to be no feedback, and if anything, even a backlash. And if they do not undertake that, they will even use residents to backlash at another resident. When the ceiling leaks and the A/C is not working, they do not even necessarily respond to anything at all that you say, depending on "how preoccupied they are" and especially if you are just Asian-American. So there is a very high bar being established and encouraged over anything this resident says or suggests, irregardless.
But again, we have new role models, and while they look like happy stars in public, such as Kim Iversen, or Choeshow, or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., we know that they still take guff from the worshippers of Baal and Moloch. Always notice how the security tries to hang in the vicinity so that the camera catches their leering gaze, the sneer on their face, the mockery in their treatment of political candidates. They even do that to politicians that anyone might vote for who are "in the mainstream." That is the contemporary attitude which we must deal with, and do so with grace, if at all possible----the soldiers of Empire at the base of the crucifix ready to take down your robe and divvy it up.
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| "This A/C unit has a special name called 'Bait Me'." The staff will not accompany the resident to look in the A/C closet but will sit in the office and wait for the A/C Ever-Repair to show up... |
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| "Just sit back and wait and let them fix it," resident says...And this is the typical saga of much of public housing and why they eventually go under is how their staff people are paid to "just follow the rules." This is why some people believe that DHA is in cahoots with HUD to help run down the housing so more properties 'go to market.' Short-term gain is exactly all that some bureaucrats care about! |
