Portable AC issues

[landrysaathoff]

Hey all. I have a GE 5100 BTU portable AC. It works great, but has two issues.

1. Turns off in the middle of the night. It will just stop and go dead quiet — no fan or anything. However, power stays on and it will resume operation if I leave it alone, but it will do it again after a seemingly random amount of time. One time it was for literally 5 seconds, and another it was a whole 30 mins.

2. it leaked last night. I opened the drain plugs — nothing but a dribble. Only had the unit a month and I live in NE Colorado - so it’s pretty dry. It wasn’t overflowing.
The next morning, I was messing with it, and I tipped the unit a bit to see if more water would drain out of the drainage hole. Nothing came out of there, HOWEVER a noticble amount of water came out of the exhaust opening where the window hose attaches to the unit. I assume that’s the source, but I don’t know why.

Any help? Most places I’ve looked say it’s an overflowing drain problem… but like I said I think my problem is different.

 

[punkncat]

In a VERY fast look through the specs and such....it would appear to me that either there is some blockage keeping water draining and likely a float valve type safety shutting the system down such as NOT to drain all over the floor (I do note this model is supposed to dehumidify and not drain according to spec).
I also notice it mentions having a 24 hour on/off timer that can be configured, so might check to see if you inadvertently messed with that.

The reviews for this model seem overall to be pretty good. Almost EVERY bad review mentioned exactly what you are experiencing. Hmm.

 

[landrysaathoff]

I also notice it mentions having a 24 hour on/off timer that can be configured, so might check to see if you inadvertently messed with that.

I did just find in the specs that the unit has an “anti-freeze shut down protection” feature that might be causing the unit to turn off. It senses the temperature of the hose to determine if it should turn off to prevent freeze damage… so maybe chilly CO nights are causing the AC to think it is freezing up?

As for the leaking, I will check the top/upper drain outlet when I get off work today. I only checked the bottom/lower drain outlet this morning. If I get a significant amount of drainage from to top outlet then a blockage could be my issue.

Still open to other suggestions. It is under warranty, but I’d prefer to troubleshoot the unit myself first.