window air conditioner drips a LOT of water

That means it's pulling a large amount of water from the air in your apartment. After an hour or two, the amount of water coming out the back should slow down considerably as the apartment acclimates.

The water can only come from one place. The air it is circulating.

I have a real old 240V unit that is 22K BTU and weighs 250+ lbs. I can't use it anymore since I had vinyl windows put in because it is so heavy, it bows the sash! I didn't want to go through all the nonsense of rigging up a bracket that attaches to the side of the house, so I just got a newer and more efficient unit.

Bottom line is that it sounds like your unit is running just fine. On soupy days, I would see a steady stream of water coming out the back of mine.

Newer units don't have holes in them anymore. They have a solid bottom and the fan dips in to this water splashing it all over the hot coils. The idea is that this helps to dissipate the heat better. The only problem I've found is that you need to make sure you drain this well in the fall (stand it on it's side for 1/2 a day) or you'll have a moldy A/C unit come next summer.

It means that it is working great (better than the neighbor's units) and it also means that you are in a very humid area

This is Turtle.

By What i have heard so far , I don't see anything wrong with the system.

TURTLE

Hi Ryan, hope you are having a nice day

On 30-Jun-05 At About 16:00:00, Ryan Meier wrote to All Subject: window air conditioner drips a LOT of water

RM> From: Ryan Meier

RM> Hello

RM> I live in a fairly old apartment building that only has a single RM> window air conditioner. The air it outputs into my apartment is cold RM> and it does a good job keeping my apartment cool. But it does drip RM> a great deal of water out of the external vent, and I'd like to know RM> if this means that the unit is inefficient, is being run too much, RM> etc.

Most newer units use the condensate water to make them more efficient by slinging it onto the condenser coil. so they are also dehumidifying as well but you just don't see as much water draining.

-=> HvacTech2

Hi cowboy, hope you are having a nice day

On 30-Jun-05 At About 09:02:51, cowboy wrote to All Subject: Re: window air conditioner drips a LOT of water

c> From: "cowboy"

c> > I'd like to know if this means that the unit is inefficient, >> is being run too much, etc.

c> It means that it is working great (better than the neighbor's units) c> and it also means that you are in a very humid area

If you knew anything about A/C you would know that the newer Window units Have a slinger for the condensate water and use it to improve efficiency. so they are working as well as his but they are running more efficiently

-=> HvacTech2

And it also means he is running it intermittantly. The humidity in the house climbs back up - repeat cycle.

Or it runs continuously, with lots of house air leakage.

Nick

Do any central a/c units use this method to improve efficiency? If not, I wonder why?

There's several reasons they don't, IMO. First and foremost (to me) is that the condensate doesn't alway go out near the condensing unit.