Does your Property Manager Protect your Rental Property?

Do you or your property manager have preventative measures in place to protect your very valuable rental property? Today I wanted to discuss Air Conditioners and in particular condensation drains.

The air conditioners job is pretty straight forward, it simply takes incoming air that travels through an air filter, cools it, and returns it to the home hopefully 16-20 degrees cooler. In the process of cooling the air, condensation forms and drips in to a pan and exits through a drain pipe, usually at the side of the home.

On occasion the drain pipe can get clogged in which case there is an overflow drain pipe that will drain the water from the pan to hopefully to temporarily protect you from damage.

Lower drains like this are supposed to have water/condensation

Top drains like these should NEVER have water leaking. If so, your main drains are clogged and you need to report immediately

But if you think about it, something caused the main drain to clog, so that same issue, which we will get to, will likely cause the overflow drain to clog as well causing the damage shown below.

So how does this get prevented?

Here are a few thing we at AZ Property Management Group do to help circumvent this happening.

1. Filters!! If the air that is being drawn in to the system is dirty, it will eventually clog the evaporator coils and allow debris to get in to the pan and clog the drain line. We are discussing this with our owners and some provide filters in hopes that the majority of tenants will replace them monthly to keep the air as clean as possible. We explain to our tenants it will also help keep their energy cost lower.
2. Inspections. Our vendors look at the register vents and filters while onsite doing other repairs to see if we may need to assist the tenant in replacing the filters.
3. Education. During our move-in walk-thru we point out the drains and explain to them to notify us immediately if they see drainage from the top drain. We also discuss changing filter and show them how to do it.

A good property manager will do more than find a tenants and collect rent each month. We are part of your team and helping to protect your investment. It’s the behind the scene items like this that makes it worth having someone looking out for your best interest. If we can help with your property, please give us a call.