How Honest Fix Installs an Air Handler

An air handler is the indoor half of a system that has no furnace, most often a heat pump or a cooling-only setup. It holds the evaporator coil and the blower, and on a heat pump it usually has electric heat strips for backup. A furnace burns gas to make heat; an air handler moves air across a coil and, when needed, across electric heat. Because it has a coil, it makes condensate whenever it is cooling.

Because the blower is on a different side of the drain in each case. In a positive-pressure cabinet the blower pushes air toward the drain opening, so a trap would be blown dry and air would escape through the drain; that cabinet gets a cleanout tee and no trap. In a negative-pressure cabinet the blower pulls against the drain, so without a trap the suction holds the water in the pan; that cabinet gets a trap with a cleanout tee. Honest Fix confirms the right configuration against the manufacturer's instructions for your specific unit every time, because the manufacturer's requirement is what governs. Matching the drain to the cabinet is the single most important detail on an air handler.

That is the overflow safety switch, and Honest Fix installs one in the secondary drain port on every air handler. If the primary drain clogs, the switch shuts the system off before the pan overflows. Air handlers are often in attics and closets above finished rooms, which is exactly why the switch matters. 

On a heat pump air handler, the electric heat is added as a heater kit, and there are several sizes. Honest Fix writes which kit was installed on the data tag on the door, so any technician who opens it later knows the electric heat capacity without having to guess or measure. 

So the unit can be serviced. If the line set is brazed tight against the coil access door, getting into the cabinet later means undoing the piping. Leaving the line set off the cabinet far enough that the door still opens is a small thing that saves a future repair from turning into a bigger one. 

The metering device and the coil are close to the joints being brazed, and they are heat-sensitive. Honest Fix wraps wet rags on both the liquid and suction lines as a heat sink, and adds a heat-blocking product where a joint needs more protection, so the heat is pulled away from those components while the joint still gets hot enough to braze correctly. Skipping it can cook a TXV, which then fails weeks or months later and looks like an unrelated problem. 

Most of it you can see for yourself with a flashlight. Look for a unit that sits level, a drain with the right setup for its cabinet, a safety switch in the secondary port, a line set that does not block the access doors, and the heater kit written on the door tag. The brazing is the one thing you cannot inspect, which is why it is published here instead. If you would rather not guess, that is what a free exact quote visit is for.