Why is there water around my air conditioner?
An air conditioner pulls moisture out of your air by design, and that water should leave through a condensate drain. Water on the floor means the drain is blocked, the pan is cracked, or a frozen coil has thawed all at once — and the most common cause of a frozen coil is simply a filter nobody changed.
Need someone now?
24/7 emergency service · Fredericton and southern New Brunswick
What you can safely check
- Turn the cooling off
- Set the system to OFF but leave the fan on AUTO. If ice is involved it needs to thaw before anything else.
- Check for ice
- Ice on the refrigerant lines or the indoor coil tells you the leak is thaw, not a drain problem.
- Change the filter
- Restricted airflow is the leading cause of a frozen coil, and the easiest thing to rule out.
- Look at the drain line
- Find where the small PVC line exits. If nothing drips from it while the system runs, it's blocked.
What’s probably going on
- Blocked condensate drain
- Algae and dust turn to sludge and stop the line. Far and away the most common cause.
- Frozen coil that thawed
- Ice overwhelms the pan when it melts. The ice itself is the symptom — airflow or refrigerant is the cause.
- Cracked drain pan
- Pans rust and crack with age, especially on older units.
- Poor installation
- A drain line without enough fall never clears properly and backs up every season.
Stop here and call
Water near the air handler's electrical compartment means shut the breaker off before anything else.
What we do about it
We clear the drain, check the pan and float switch, and find out why the coil froze rather than just mopping up after it.
Still stuck?
Tell us what the system is doing and we’ll tell you what it takes to fix — free quotes, no obligation, and a straight answer about whether it’s worth repairing.