My refrigerator stands across from my dishwasher, and there was a large puddle between them. I expected the dishwasher drain to be backed-up, but it was fine. At closer observation, the puddle may have almost disappeared at the base of the dishwasher…making me wonder about the fridge.
The fridge has a water line serving an ice maker and water dispenser. But, is there also a condensate drip pan at the bottom that can overflow? If so, does the drip pan usually dry by natural convection? I know there is no drain line. If by natural convection, what would cause it to overflow?
Any takers on what might be the culprit and/or obvious things to check? Thanks!
There is a drain tube which routes melt water created during the derost cycle down to a pan to be evaporated to the atmosphere.
It is quite common for the tube to become plugged by food debris and/or mould (I’ve found both).
Cleaning it out it seems like something I have to do every few years.
you also may have produced, during thawing, more water than the pan would hold.
good to check the tube. good also to clean the pan, it can get to be full of gunk. clean the fins too, it will help it run better and also keep the pan drier.
also make sure to have required air circulation distance on rear, sides and top, this helps for efficiency and dryness.
Wow- are you me? We have a fridge repairman coming to the house this morning to check on this very problem. Our fridge is leaking at the front bottom corners, and we don’t know where it’s coming from. The drip pan is empty. We’re flummoxed.
It might not be the same exact problem you’re experiencing, but I’m anxious to get the call from my wife after the repairman leaves. I’ll post later with our diagnosis.
I might suggest that while troubleshooting, you put a big towel in front of the fridge and another in front of the dishwasher for a few days.
This should help narrow down what appliance it is.
My parent’s fridge has a u-bend in the drain line about 1/2 the way up the back of the fridge. It got blocked, and the water spilled from there on to the floor. Sounds like that could be corkboard’s problem at least…
Another problem I’ve run across is that there’s sometimes a fan under the fridge to help “blow-dry” the defrost drain pan. If the fan fails or if the timer that controls it fails, the pan can overflow.
There’s not a whole lot of space under fridges anymore, so plain convection tends to just make water condense on whatever surface is immediately above the drain pain - the moving air pushes it out.
The hose that lets the defrost drain out of the fridge can get clogged - but the symptom of that is usually water and muck inside the fridge. If it can’t drain into the pan, the pan can’t overflow. I’m guessing this is **corkboard’s **problem.
One last sceario I’ve run into is the freezer’s defrost drain runs on the back side of the fridge - if the hose gets knocked loose or gets cut or gnawed on, water can leak out of it.
In some ways, self-defrosting refrigerators and freezers are fantastic things, but there’s a whole lot of ways for such a simple process to go bonkers and make a mess.
Update: clogged defrost drainage line. There was a thin layer of ice at the bottom of the freezer (we have a side-by-side unit), but no water or muck in the fridge itself.
He was in the house for, maybe, 15 minutes. $132.75.
I think it cost us $80 just to have him step over the threshold of the front door, then a prorated hourly rate or something, plus tax. It’s not as if I expected him to fix it for free, and it’s nice to have the peace of mind that I won’t step into a puddle of water when I pad downstairs in the dark for a late-night fridge run. It’s just that the cost per minute makes me wonder if I took the right career turn.
However, it’s not as bad as the time our dishwasher wouldn’t work. We couldn’t get the touchpad to register anything we pressed. So we called the guy out to the house. He walked in, we explained the problem in about ten seconds. He lowered the door, pulled up a little drainage cap at the back/bottom of the inside, and said ‘sometimes that gets stuck’. Closed the door and the keypad worked. I think he was inside the house for no more than 2 minutes, a minute and a half of which was him filling out the work order and writing a receipt for $75.