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Comment by margor | Hacker News Reader

Don't get me started on how it works in my country.

People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.

Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.

The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.

What's even the point of it?

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It is not entirely that simple. Condensate water is potential problem if wrongly discharged. But adding sufficient drainage is not that expensive per balcony basis. So it is something that should be fixed.

Condensate is discharged from the inside unit, it should never make it to the balcony.

In a typical mini-split, the water flows to the outside unit and exits the system there, so you either have a pump or a sufficiently sloped pipe from the inside unit to the outside unit.

edit: I guess you could route the drain pipe anywhere if you wanted, so I retract my previous statement.

Where do you think it is getting discharged?

Into drains in the parking garage in the case of my building. Though thinking more about it now, it's totally reasonable that other buildings might find it easiest to drain to the outside unit.

You can have drain pipes installed, but you can also just collect the water in a bucket and empty it periodically. That requires no extra investment of money, just a tiny bit of your willpower and manpower, depending on the size of the bucket.

There are also systems that spray the water back at the AC unit to cool it down, this is supposed to both improve efficiency and evaporate the water so you don't have to deal with it. I am sure those have some downsides, too.

Both are options. Still both also carry risks or don't solve entire issue. With buckets you don't want to them overflow on floors for example.

And with spraying it on ac you want complete evaporation or you are back to same problem.

As said it is not too hard problem but still something that most likely requires consideration.

I am all for solving these problems and making sure they don't cause problems for others. My problem is with the ability for arbitrary people to say "no" to your case, without even considering the options or facts.

Sure thing, you could go to court if they have any problem, but who is going to fight for AC worth $500 for a few years just to get it installed?

If you're worried about that amount of water, what do you do when it rains?

Some idiot figuring out that nice hole in cladding is right place to direct it... Or people under balconies when it is not raining not wanting to have water drop on them... In many cases balconies have less than ideal designs.

Exactly. While I personaly don't have a problem with AC condensate dripping down on the street, I can see how some people might not be used to that.

Best would probably be to use the existing rainwater pipes that lead down to the sewers - all building have those. But good luck getting that past your HOA-equivalent, as that will most probably involve some modifications to the building and we can't have that, no!

Most balconies are already going to have drainage for rain water so solving the drainage problem requires a <$1 piece of plastic tube.

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