Condensate pump above mini-split, how?

[hendersond]

I will be having a mini-split installed in a home theater I am building in a basement. I will also have a condensate pump installed since this is below grade.

I work in a public school district and walked into one of our computer labs today. I knew this lab was getting air conditioned and sure enough a mini-split had been installed on one wall about 8 feet in the air. The contractor who installed it was not finished yet and nowhere in site when I was there.

On the same wall, about a foot to the left and about a foot ABOVE the mini-split, there was a condensate pump mounted on the wall. This appeared to be a standard Little Giant condensate pump with holes for a drain line to run into, and spots to hook a vinyl hose for the pump. Sure enough there was a vinyl hose coming out of the pump and going up to where it excited the building. There was also a vinyl hose shoved into one of the tank holes that went behind the mini-split, presumably to the drain on the mini-split unit.

I always thought the drain line for a mini-split had to use gravity to get the water into the condensate pump. In other words, the condensate pump always had to be below the mini-split drain line itself.

How are they getting this setup I described to work? I could not ask the contractor since he was not there so I am hoping somebody can solve this mystery

[makinmoney]

Unless the evap side of the split has it's own pump, it's not getting there. If it did have it's own pump, why would you pump it to another pump and then out to the outside?

[plain spoken]

Many times the pumps that come with the mini-splits are limited in the amount of lift and length they can pump. Sometimes the internal pump will pump to a larger more powerful pump for the actual distance the drain line has to go. This is most likely the case in what you saw.

[hendersond]

That is exactly what I thought. What I did not do is get the model number of the Samsung mini-split to look up its specs. None-the-less, if the Samsung had a pump, why pump it to another pump? The only possible explanation is the pump built into the mini-split does not have enough lift. I did not measure the height of the tube coming out of the Little Giant, but it went up a ways

[comfortmaster1]

I think the installer made a mistake.

[hendersond]

I finally talked to the installer and sure enough he installed one of the micro pumps in the back of the Samsung that pumped to a larger more powerful Little Giant pump, that pumped the condensate out of the building. This once again shows that water does not run uphill