What can I do within the remaining four days to hasten drying and prevent mildew? Run the A/C flat out to lower ambient humidity as much as possible. Apply gentle heat (clamp-on flood lamps work well) and air circulation (fans) to the wet area. Gentle heat plus circulation will dry things in a matter of hours.
If your A/C ducting is fiberglass board, it will not be harmed. Gypsum board can usually take a few soakings.
Lysol was a mistake. More water. Mildew is not inhibited by medicinal odors, although it smells like you did something.
Dessicants (DryRid) are not effective except in tightly sealed spaces that are not opened, and quickly spend themselves. Time constant then is still days or weeks.
Beware of clean-up crews that will descend wanting $100s or $1000s to do what you can do rather easily yourself. They will shake their heads, and give you grim looks, and poke around with fancy looking meters with needles pointing to "pay these guys NOW whatever they ASK", all designed to justify absurd prices. Take their free diagnosis but do the cure yourself.
If the dwelling is vacant, snowbird, make sure you have humidity control while you're away and a backup way to read it. Sling psychrometers are cheap and accurate, train your neighbor to sample your air.
And WHY did you have a valve on the condensate drain??? You DO have a
2nd (backup) condensate drain pan and line, right? You must assume the main one will clog, and have an alert system that tells you it is clogged. Thanks for the help. Warranty folks came and didn't hose me (suprise, suprise). They made sure that I had gotten all the gunk out of the drain line and that everything else was in order. However, they did nothing to reduce the wet insulation in the return box. So, I'm leaving the fan in there and have my humidistate controling the A/C, no heating light, though. Not dry yet, but getting there. Got a house sitter while I'm away and he'll check things out for me.
Finally, just want to clear the "valve" issue. Not really a valve. I put a T into the drain line with a plug on the top of it. This way by easily removing the plug, I can pour in chorine to flush the line every month...as I should have been doing all along.
Adam
Actually, chorine bleach is NOT the preferred method now. Any tech with any training will actually use what is called a Gallo Gun on each spring service. Chorine can do more damage than good to the AC coil itself, IF you do not have a P trap inline. As far as the wet insulation....you have two choices, in a case like this....replace the insulation or box, or allow it to dry out. We insulation is NOT EVER covered under warranty, as a clogged condensate drain is NOT a warranty issue...it is a maintence issue..