Ceiling Drip with Error Code: Drain Pump Motor Failed

An overflow from a concealed unit that has drained without trouble for years, with the pan full and no water leaving. The unit itself cools normally. Nothing in the room or the ceiling has been altered.

An overflowing pan means water is arriving faster than it leaves, which on a pumped installation has a short list behind it. Either the pump is not being asked to run, or it is being asked and cannot. Lifting the float by hand while the supply is live separates those two in seconds. Where the pump stays silent under a live command, the fault is in the pump or its supply rather than in anything the water is doing.

Any pump of this kind runs every time the unit cools, which over years amounts to a great many hours for a small motor. Bearings wear and windings age exactly as they would in anything else, and eventually the motor stops. Where the drain relies on that pump entirely, the water has nowhere else to go, so a component failure immediately becomes a ceiling problem rather than an inconvenience.

The pump is replaced, and the more useful question is asked at the same time: whether any part of this run could fall under gravity instead. A gravity drain has no motor, no switch and no supply, so it has no failure of this kind. Where the building allows it, removing the pump removes the fault permanently rather than resetting its clock.