Pump switch failed

The primary switch did fail and a replacement is not available. I wired around it and put a regular switch in its place. I can keep the furnace running as long as I flip the switch to pump out the reservoir about every 90 minutes. This means that the furnace won't keep running at night or when I'm not home.

An online parts site charges only $10 for a rebuilt primary switch but doesn't have any. But that suggests that there's nothing to it to rebuild the switch Eventually I'll get around to trying that.

Is there any reason I can't put a drain line on the bottom of the reservoir and let gravity take the water away? The secondary switch would still shut down the system if the drain got plugged up. I can see the point of the existing setup in an installation where the path to a drain line was higher than the reservoir at some point, but it seems needlessly complex for mine. On mine, a pump lifts the water higher than the reservoir through a hose that takes it a foot below the bottom of the reservoir to connect to the discharge line.

Thanks, Stan

On heat pumps/central AC, there is a P-trap in the condensate drain so that the air handler doesn't suck in "Stuff" from the the attic/crawlspace/basement.

The pump in your existing unit may act (indirectly) as a check valve/trap. So a "straight pipe" might not be completely the same thing, even if the drainage function works fine.

This is an example of how a clever non-expert like me gets in trouble. It seems like there's always at least on thing I don't know or one thing I've failed to consider. It's great to be able to get the necessary information rather than having to get the furnace technician out at $85 for the first 1/2 hour and $85 per hour after that (which is not to say that he isn't worth his pay.)

I put a 1/16" right angle on the end of a piece of thin wire and felt for the end of the discharge tube at the bottom of the reservoir. I couldn't snag it, so it's way down there all right. Can you think of any reason that installing a gravity fed drain higher than the bottom of the discharge tube wouldn't maintain the integrity of the system?

Thanks, Stan