Last Friday I wake up, get out of bed, step onto soft spot next to the bed. Crap. Open the door to the HVAC system and feel damp breeze waft out and see water all around the bottom of the unit dripping down from the ducting going up into the ceiling. Fun. Let work know I won't be in. start soaking water up with towels and start calling around town to find an outfit with an opening that day in the first week of the first real heat wave of the summer. Right... well I get lucky and after some begging get someone to send a tech by to at least try and help me figure out what the problem is and what to do. Ducts are water logged... leaking back down. Need to replace ducts. Set up duct replacement. Continue changing out towels. Maybe its not that bad. Come home from work to change out towels on Monday and remember its time to change the filter. Lift filter and see a glint... a reflection.... CRAP. Shine flash light.... DOUBLE CRAP. Take vents off and take a picture of.....
Needless to say the words to describe the feeling that hit at that point are numerous, short and involve lots and lots of beeps. Quick trip to Home Depot and I am sucking up fuzz and .... whatever the hell that was into the new super suck 9000 unit (RIGID Shop Vac). And seeing plenty of drips still coming down so obviously the towel routine had not been as effective as we thought. Start going over the unit and find the source as the access less PVC drain pipe coming off what I later learn is the the condensation pan. Water is pooling on the top and weeping down the side of the unit coming primarily out from where the pipe connects. Didn't look like much really, just all adds up. Ok... now what. I really don't want to turn off the unit but I can't let the water continue to soak into the wood. To late to go to the store. Previous adventures in plumbing tell me to leave the damn pipe alone and let someone that knows what the hell they are about deal with it. So my brain runs through a few dozen different possible ways to re-direct the water so I can get it gathered before it gets to the floor. Stop gap one was using a towel as a wick to get into a bucket, or change out before it starts dripping (worked, but to much water)... Tried getting it to a bucket, got about half of it going through the towel.... not bad but not good enough.
Then it hits me. I have a 3d printer now. 2 hours later the mark one Home Emergency Weeping Water Redirection Unit (HEWWFRU).... or really just a quick and dirty flat sided funnel.... pops off the bed.
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| Mark 1 Home Emergency Water Re-direction Unit (HEWWFRU) .... also known as a flat sided funnel |
Not the best outcome. Can't see it here but the top layers (in terms of print direction) of the funnel before the spout partially failed to fill in so there was more than the expected hole through the spout which I had thought to use with some tubing to run out into a large bucket for a reservoir. Couple of magnets and a rag as a wick and it is mounted to the side of the unit and the majority of the water is now going where I want it... a gallon pitcher down the side of the unit. But... the flat lip is problematic as there is still more than a little bit of water escaping down the side (and back) of the unit. Enter the Mark two.
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| Mark 2 Home Emergency Weeping Water Flow Redirection Unit or HEWWFRU (right)... still a funnel, but a bit more specialized one |
It is wider. Has angled edges into a curved lip to gather a wide area of weeping water into the collection area. To get it far enough away from the side to drip where I want it, I extended out the skinner section. The holes were in the design (ie didn't have to add them later). The angles selected and the walls mean no overhangs (overhang was the problem with undesired holes in the MK 1 seen above). Those with sensitive dispositions may look away now, extreme item repurposing below.
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| Mark 2 installed with multiple magnetic fastening units, water wick and Trojan water seal |
So the rag is wrapped around the pipe junction with the unit and sitting where the water has been pooling and is draped over the side into the Mark 2 HEWWFRU (gotta be a better acronym... it will do for now). You may notice a repurposed prophylactic (Trojan© Water Shield or TWS) is providing a nice water tight shield to prevent water from slipping down behind the HEWWFRU. Why a Condom? Well it was the quick fix. I later tried some plumbers putty but couldn't get it on thin enough and it caused problems with the magnets. I didn't want to epoxy the thing to the side so I went back to the TWS solution. Worked like a champ.
You can't see them here but inside are a couple of neodymium magnets I had laying around and that is what is holding this all in place.
Now I had another problem. With the water redirected I could now determine how much was coming out. Gallon jug lasted 2 hours. Half a gallon an hour. More short expressive words and broadcast beeping. This caused two issues, one: retro calculating back to first indication of a problem several days prior meant there was a crap ton of water presumably now spread through out the sub floor. Two... I would need to get up to empty the damn thing every 90 minutes or so (not to mention not being able to leave the unit on and go to work). This found me bleary eyed at Lowes soon after it opened the next morning. The Mark 2 had taken several hours to print and I didn't want to try and design a printable tube on the design again after the mark 1 failure... so I just wanted to figure out how to get from that drop out of the MK II into a bigger bucket outside the closet the unit was in.
Quick Aside: while all this was going on I had of course immediately called for the HVAC guys to come back once I found the water under the unit etc... and once I had shop vac'ed up that standing water and crud I had a bunch of pans under the unit in that horror space catching the drip off from water collected under the unit. At this point I was pretty confident that the water was no longer getting to the floor of the house otherwise the unit would have been turned off. This was later confirmed by the contractor contact from state farm who came out to assess the water damage with the help of his humidity sensor. While there was still some collecting under the unit but that was kind of 'damage is done' deal. Replacing or even shoring that up from underneath is going to be a bastid....
Returning from my early morning Lowes run I had some .5" tubing, a through hull, a sacrificial plastic box, an adapter with a barb to get from the through hull to the tubing. Hmmmm... sacrificial box was to wide, forgot to measure damnit. Hmmmm.... used baby wipe plastic box is the right size. Cobble cobble cobble together.... out with the gallon jug, in with the Lower High Capacity Receiving Unit (LHCRU.... or more accurately a kludge). The tube from the LHCRU is run out to ye olde 5 gallon bucket (YOFGB).
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| Lower High Capacity Receiving Unit (LHCRU) For The HEWWFRU with TWS |
If you look close you can also see that after I put in the new highly modified HEWWFRU LHCRU I added a final piece of flare in the form of a splash reduction apparatus ( SRA AKA a spare piece of Lexan) to reduce the amount of..... splash. Right.
Now I have a reasonable amount of time where what I thought was the source of the leak (failed pipe connection) is re-directed so that everything else should be drying out. Only to find while most of the drips underneath had stopped... there were some still going. Far lower rate that what I had going into the bucket but still problematic. So in addition to the bucket I am occasionally changing out/draining pans under the unit and waiting for HVAC.
Now lets be clear on a couple of things. The above is meant to be a bit humorous and the silly jargon and acronym stuff is all with tongue firmly in cheek. If I knew what the hell I was about I would have fixed the problem rather than simply stopping the damage from continuing. Once the guys that do this for a living got there it took them about 30 minutes to diagnose and fix the problem. Turned out to be a clogged condensation drain. The pipe connection was fine, water was coming from the overflowing pan, just happened to be primarily coming out above where the pipe join was. While they were at it I had them install a safety float switch that shuts the unit down if this ever happens again. This also provides access to the drain pipe so I can easily blow it out/drop bleach down it etc... Very expensive little switch at 200 bucks... but worth it.
As I mentioned In the midst of this I also had a contractor in to assess water damage and they found the humidity out away from the unit was low enough it wasn't registering on the detector. So the steps I took were effective otherwise I would have shut the damn thing down. The other bitter sweet bit of news was those soft spots were now crackly where they had been spongey. Neither the initial HVAC tech (who missed them damn leak) or the Contractor believed I needed to shut it down as long as I was getting the water taken care of. Basically, the bottom line of all the above shenanigans meant I didn't need to shut the unit off in 90+ degree heat and take us all to a hotel or something while waiting for a repair to be made.
I don't think I would have been successful without the HEWWFRU which I could not have done without having my new toy. Without this piece the TWS, LHCRU with SRA and YOFGB would not have been able to do their respective jobs as I do not think I could have redirected enough of the water sufficiently by other means in the time available before I called it quits, shut the unit off and bugged out to a Ho Jo. Between the avoided two or three nights in a hotel and probably a boarded Trudi I think the Printrbot almost paid for itself as a result of this particular adventure in home ownership. Not exactly a reason to justify the purchase of a fancy plastic melter but it was an interesting case of what you can do with one which I thought some of you out there may enjoy reading about. If you hadn't figured it out yet though, this is NOT recommended as a primary solution by any means!
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