Late yesterday afternoon, the ceiling-mounted air conditioner, in the travel trailer, started leaking copious amounts of water onto the kitchen counter. I suspected the evaporator coil drip pan was plugged up, thereby allowing water to drip inside the trailer.
I found a YouTube video describing the exact symptoms, and its conclusion was the same as mine. The video showed how to disassemble the unit on the roof to reach and clean the plugged-up drip tray.
Unfortunately, it was getting dark, so I had to postpone my trip to the roof. It started raining about 3:00 AM the next morning and rained cats and dogs until about 12:00 noon. Around 3:00 p.m., I was pretty sure the rain was done for the day, so I scrambled up on the roof and followed the instructions I saw in the YouTube video.
One of the corollaries of Murphy’s Law says the fault will be under the panel where the most screws have to be removed to access it. That was certainly the case in this instance. After removing about 20 sheet metal screws and carefully peeling apart the evaporator coil housing, I was able to access the drip pan. Sure enough, its drains were plugged up, and the drip pan was full of water.
I managed to slide the drip pan out, got down off the roof to clean it, climbed back on the roof, and reinstalled it. After pressing, pushing, pulling, and tugging all the sharp sheet metal panels back into place, I managed to get all the screws back into their holes without slicing my fingers! Woo-hoo!
I reinstalled the plastic protective cover on the A/C unit, climbed down off the roof, turned the circuit breaker back on, and flipped on the thermostat. The air conditioner roared back to life and ran quite some time without dripping water into the kitchen. A decided improvement! Once again, all the travel trailer systems are GO – that is, until the next thing breaks 🙂.
One thing is for sure: YouTube is your friend when you are on the road with your RV!