This is late, but I wanted to say I had a similar experience a few weeks after we moved into our new home. In our case, a brown water spot showed up on the dining room ceiling, right under the master bath. Naturally assumed it to be leaking pipes in the bathroom, but surprise surprise, it turned out to be a leaking plumbing vent pipe's boot on the roof of the house, over the master bath. (Of course that was not known or realized until the dining room ceiling was opened up by the plumber in four places seeking a leaking pipe!) The rain water found a path through the roof, down the exterior wall, bypassing the master bath ceiling, and then it hooked to the left and emptied into the dining room ceiling. Those details aren't my point here - I'm just saying these water leak sources can be tricky to locate. And yes, the people who sold the house to us were well aware of the problem and had shoved foam rubber into the vent pipe's boot from the attic in a feeble and irresponsible attempt to remedy the problem. $150 for a roofer to fix that boot would have prevented costlier damage that we paid for. $500 insurance deductible meant we paid the entire $480 repairs out of pocket ($150 to fix the boot and the balance to fix the dining room ceiling that never should have had to been torn up!!). And yes, we too had paid an inspector good money to look things over prior to purchase but he didn't see this at all. By the way, that was just the beginning of my roof vent pipe boot failures - a second one failed soon after, filling a bathroom light fixture with water - just like on the 3 Stooges episodes!! We ended up replacing all of the boots even though the house was just 7 years old. I hope you didn't get too discouraged - I find that home ownership is a roller coaster ride of good times and costly repair times! Overall though, you'll probably make money off of the investment in your home in the long run. Godspeed to you.

I guess i don't understand the point of the secondary drain. I've seen when drains clog with mold, but that's only after many years.... so I don't know what the secondary drain would accomplish here. A malfunctioning TXV could cause it to ice, as well as low charge and restricted airflow... but usually you see that in a cap tube system since the TXV is regulating the flow into the evaporator based on evaporator temp. I understand that it produces a lot of water, but you have a cutoff system in place. A secondary water barrier should prevent water damage as long as the cutoff is working. It's not so much that the volume of ice is too big to be contained by the pan... it's that it extends beyond the pan to the suction line and the possibly the coil housing. If it were iced up like that, you should be getting almost no airflow through the unit. "The tech who came yesterday did check the charge and said there was good pressure (but he also recharged it)." ... those things are mutually exclusive. You don't add refrigerant to a unit that is properly charged. What's more, you don't guess at the charge and you can't properly charge a unit where the TXV has failed because sub-cooling is the the only acceptable way to determine the proper charge. Look, if it's icing, you really need to see that. You can't guess unless you see why the unit is leaking... you have already done that and you've had to repaint the ceiling a couple of times.

I too had this problem, got three units on top of our bar, first unit started leaking through roof, pulled air filters and replaced, cleaned out drain pipes which were full of gunk from dirty air filters and were clogging drain, added some bleach/water to drain, cleaned condensation pan, and unit is no longer leaking. Did this maintenance to all units. HVAC guy was going to charge standard 150 an hour plus parts, plus a possible emergency call which was going to cost me close to 800 an hour during this texas peak season heat/humidity, was literally going to break the bank! This post has saved me! Small business that is staying afloat no pun intended, says thank you for honest answers! Cheers!

I take it this is DIY? Many "new" flooring professionals do NOT know how to add the twine between planks. The more experienced guys learned it from the old timers who taught them 30 years ago. If this is DIY, then you will need to find out how to add the twine/filler to fill the larger gaps. Water based polyurethane will grab drywall quite nicely - and not let go. Oil based polyurethane (the really stinky stuff that is stupid-cheap) will turn it orange. That's why we say oil based finishes will "amber". They actually turn white paper (or drywall) orange. Good luck. If this is DIY, I highly recommend looking up the twine/filler technique. It is well worth the dozens of hours you will spend learning the technique and the dozens of hours you will spend putting it into place.