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I am looking for ideas to prevent flooding caused by a portable air conditioner.

I bought a 10K SACC refurb Danby portable AC. It comes with a hose, one drain opening at the bottom, and a 'continuous' opening in the middle. AC was not properly refurbished, I vacuumed something out of the continuous opening and still have to tilt the device to ensure continuous drain from the middle opening.

At the moment, I am using a smaller bucket, which takes about 3.5 hours to fill in the current high humidity and heat. I use a timer and wake up in the middle of the night to empty the bucket. I fear forgetting to set the timer or that some other malfunction will lead to flooding.

My bedroom size is a fraction of the advertised AC capacity but has no door. Instead, I use curtains to somewhat isolate the rest of the apartment.

AC is very far from the sink

How can I let the device run all night and stop worrying?

Here are a few ideas:

  • Buy a large bucket or barrel: This is simple but not ideal. I would need to move the AC even further away, and risking straining my spine with heavy lifting. Unless I buy a hose extension, moving the AC further from the window could cause overheating.

  • Buy a long hose and put it out of the window: This is not ideal for other tenants who may walk under my window. Additionally, I would need to set up a pump or place the AC on a pedestal or buy a pump, as for some reason water would not float upward (AC switches into ventilation mode if hose just a little up).

  • Buy or fix an old dehumidifier: This might have lesser cooling power and might overload the power outlet, perhaps burn the fuses.

  • Buy or fashion a water alarm - no prior experience with that, but seems as simple solution.

  • attach Float Valve Shut-Off. I though just use empty plastic bottle and attach a hose, but temu or ali-express sell ready ones them below 10$. Well, I guess can be combined with a pump

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  • Finally I got a leak overnight, but not due to overflow but because for some reason bucket felt from the step stool. Luckily a heavy curtain took part of the hit. I placed AC and bucket on the floor, and also fixed the middle 'continuous' opening with vacuum and tilting AC toward bucket. I also found a larger plastic container.
    – Serge
    Commented Jul 21 at 13:00

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Go to a home improvement store and buy a condensate pump and some clear tubing that fits on the outlet plus enough to get to a sink. My dehumidifier has a hose fitting so I needed a female hose fitting to tubing adapter. Run tubing, gravity drained, from unit to pump (like a couple feet of tubing). Run second tube from pump to sink. I actually ran mine to my AC condensate pump. The condensate pump will automatically kick on when it fills up. I became an expert at this through flooded basements.

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  • AC is far from the bathroom, also risk to trip over hose overnight
    – Serge
    Commented Jun 20 at 19:28
  • @serge run it though the window the exhaust is going out of
    – Tiger Guy
    Commented Jun 20 at 20:10
  • ok will try, at this heat condencate will evaporate before hitting anybody's head. But hope the heat wave is over. I had such setup with gravity drain in another room with big windows, but hose tapped right on a bush
    – Serge
    Commented Jun 20 at 22:53
  • If the condensate pump doesn't have a non-return valve then you can add one in the tubing on the output side of the pump. Without one, the water will run back down the tube from the sink and the pump will run again until the level goes down far enough. Then the water will run back down the tube and the cycle will repeat annoyingly every few tens of seconds.
    – Andrew Morton
    Commented Jul 25 at 15:12

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