What is a Condensate Pump?

This page was created to answer one of the most common questions about condensate pump: this is the “what is a condensate pump?” question that we often read in forums and email from our prospects.

Generally speaking a pump is simply a mechanical/electrical device used to move fluid, typically water, from one place to another. A condensate pump is teat another type of these devices designed for home use in conjunction with with other systems like heating or cooling products (like you AC system, refrigeration products, condensing boiler furnaces or (less common found in our houses) steam systems.

The typical use of a condensate pump is to remove the water produced by these other systems during their normal operation cycle.

Normally, when an air conditioning system operates in hot weather of summer, dampness (or humidity if you prefer) is removed out of air and is transformed in condensate liquid, the water. Most of latest cooling systems currently available in the market perform a remarkable job of de-humidification,  removing something like twenty quarts of water from the air during every hour.   In a majority of systems, if installed in the basement or attic/roof terrace, the water produced will be flowing by gravity to either an outdoor roof gutter (you should have one of this on your roof right) or somewhere else.

A lot of systems are with condensate drains which are either under the level of closer plumbing (meaning that the roof gutter location is higher than those of the draining pipe) or are far away causing gravity drainage unfeasible. This is the typical situation when you should use a small device, called a “removal condensate pump” (or condensation removal pump if you prefer) to solve this problem.

These devices are normally the size of  a shoe box and contain a float switch, a water reservoir and (of course) the pump doing the water removal job. You can see a typical condensate pump in the image below:

what is a condensate pump

Picture of a typical condensate pump

 

How Does Condensate Pumps Work