AC Leaking Water in Woodside
Cooling pulls moisture out of the air, drops it into a pan, and runs it off through a drain line. When you find water near an indoor unit, that path failed somewhere between the pan and wherever the line daylights outside. The line clogged, the pan cracked, the pump quit, or the float switch that should have caught an overflow stuck. Nearly always it is a repair to that one component, not a reason to replace anything.
What is different about Woodside is the ground these systems drain into. Estates off Mountain Home Road and Kings Mountain Road sit on real acreage, often with a guest house or pool house adding a second or third air handler to the property, and the condensate lines serving them often run long to reach a low point on the lot. Redwood duff and root growth on the canyon parcels bury outdoor terminations fast, and a horse property adds its own load of debris around anything sitting at ground level. A line discharging into that mess backs up quietly until the water finds a ceiling or a closet floor instead of the yard.
The shade and elevation keep cooling load light here, but these big properties run their systems long enough through summer to move real water. With a main house, guest house, and sometimes a pool house on one property, the first job is always finding which unit is actually leaking before we talk about anything else.
Common causes
Long condensate run on a canyon lot. A line reaching from an air handler down to a low point on a sloped Woodside parcel often ends up long and barely pitched, and water moving slowly through it clogs faster. We clear it using a wet vac at the termination, flush the line back through, and confirm it drains. Where the slope itself is the problem, we will put a re-route on the estimate so it stops coming back.
Blocked outdoor termination under redwood duff. On the canyon parcels the drain line often discharges into duff, needles, and loose soil that washes back over it season after season. A buried termination backs the whole line up. We locate the discharge point, clear it, and where it makes sense we extend or relocate it somewhere duff will not reach it as fast.
Cracked or overflowing drain pan. When the line clogs or the pan itself cracks, water spills from the air handler cabinet. We inspect the primary and secondary pans, clear the secondary drain, and replace a cracked or corroded pan. In a guest house or pool house closet, that pan is often the only thing standing between a leak and real damage.
Failed condensate pump. Where the grade on the property makes gravity drainage impractical, a condensate pump lifts the water to a point it can drain from. A failed pump motor or a stuck float floods the unit fast. We test the pump under a filled reservoir and replace it if it will not run.
Stuck float safety switch. The float switch is supposed to shut the unit down once the pan fills. Stuck open, it lets the system keep running and overflowing. We test it under a rising water condition and replace it if it will not cut the circuit, then confirm the unit actually stops.
Frozen evaporator coil. A coil iced over from low refrigerant or poor airflow sheds a flood of water the moment it thaws. We read pressures and coil temperature to find why it froze in the first place. On a zoned main house, a stuck damper choking one branch is a frequent cause.
How we diagnose it
- Determine which building's system is leaking, whether it is the main house, the guest house, or the pool house.
- Trace the full condensate path, including any long canyon-lot run and the outdoor termination, for clogs and buried discharge points.
- Inspect and clear primary and secondary pans and drains, confirming the unit drains freely.
- Test the condensate pump and float switch to identify which one actually failed.
- Check refrigerant charge, airflow, and zone damper operation to rule out a frozen coil as the source.
$99 diagnostic, credited toward the repair. You get a written quote before any work begins.
AC Leaking Water in Woodside: common questions
Do you come out to Woodside, and how fast?
Does the canyon lot make leaks more likely up here?
Water is dripping from a ceiling in the guest house, not from the unit itself. What is going on?
Nearby and related
AC Leaking Water near Woodside: Portola Valley · Hillsborough · Menlo Park .
This is usually a ac repair in Woodside job. See our ac repair overview or the Woodside service area.
AC Leaking Water in Woodside
Repairs start with a $99 diagnostic, credited toward the fix. Replacing a system? The on-site assessment visit is free. Same-day written findings either way.
Bay Area · 7am–7pm · 7 days · no overtime charges