We moved into a different house a couple of weeks ago, and included was a fairly new-looking Kenmore fridge. It appears to be a frost-free model. I noticed a little bit of water on an upper shelf yesterday, and today I had water actually running out of the front of the door and onto the floor - the well at the bottom of the fridge was completely full. There is a drip coming from a small vent at the top of the fridge compartment.
I’ve had frost-free fridges before, and I’ve never had water just running out of the fridge (I’ve never even had a drip inside the fridge, come to think of it). What do you suppose is going on with it?
I’m not an expert in fridges, but I’ll tell you why the cooler at my job had a drippy compressor. We’re in and out of the cooler all day, enough to bring the temperature up to 60 (um… 16 and don’t worry, we’re not storing food in there) from 40 (4) so it’s pretty much running constantly during the daytime. Plus, the door opens up into a room which hovers between 90-100 (30s) at this time of year. Even though it’s not that humid here in the summer, that’s still a lot of water that’s gonna condense when the air’s temperature has to be lowered by 60 degrees. We’re filling 5-gallon buckets in two days.
Somehow sludge got into the drainage hose and the water backed up, dripping all over the inside of the cooler.
So, all I know to tell you is check to see if the drainage hoses are clogged and check the door seals for leaks. Do you know if the fridge is maintaining temperature okay?
While my fridge isn’t frost-free, I had a similar problem with the bottom of the fridge filling with water when I first moved into my apartment (uh, 8 years ago I think?). The repairman was there to fix something in the oven and I mentioned the fridge to him. He opened it up and checked the bottom rear of the inside compartment, and moved the drain plug. Apparently it’s designed for condensation to drain down to the bottom and out to a drain pan that’s next to the hot compressor, where it evaporates. My drain plug was plugged, so the water wasn’t escaping out to the drain pan.
Maybe yours has something similar? Probably happened when someone cleaned it, you know, put everything in its place, plug the plug in, and shut all the doors…
I have seen the after-effects of departing tenants cleaning out the fridge and thinking that little hole at the back of the fridge is some miracle drain that they can stuff old grapes into and have them disappear.
The new tenants then say “What’s that smell?” and “Why is there murky water in the bottom of the fridge?”
Blech. Happily, you can probably fix it in a moment with a pipe cleaner or something similar. Just poke around, and the clog should pop free and let the water drain out into the drain pan under the fridge. Oh, don’t be completely surprised if the pan is missing, so the gunk just spills out onto the floor under the fridge. You’d be amazed at what rotten people will swipe from apartments.
I was having a bad smell in the kitchen when we first moved in. Okay, so I’m looking for a drain plug somewhere on the bottom of the fridge?
Yep. It’s probably under the vegetable bins.
Or by what ignorant people think the previous tenants left behind. 
I stole about 4 roasting pans from the broiler section of 4 different apartment stoves before I finally learned that roasting pans come with the ovens. :smack: Ooooops.
It wasn’t because I’m rotten; I just didn’t know any better.
Zuul has taken up residence
Working for maintenance in a college residence for a couple years (as a student) had me fixing this alot.
You’ll need:
Screwdriver (Phillips and Hex probably)
A paint scraper
A short length of copper wire
Wire cutters
Unplug your fridge, take all of your food out of the freezer and put it in a tub or something, maybe pack it with newspaper to keep it from thawing, especially if you don’t work quickly. Take out the rack and such, scrap out the ice chunks so they don’t melt onto the floor while you work.
You’ll see some screws, probably hex heads at the back panel of the fridge, undo everything and carefully remove that back panel. There’ll be a downward chute for airflow, which will come off with the panel. An icemaker will complicate this, or there may be the wiring for an icemaker, you should be able to deal with that easily - pay attention to how everything comes apart!
You’ll see vertical aluminium fins, which are very sharp. Be careful as you’ll probably cut your knuckles on them, as I did frequently. Don’t worry if you bend them a bit. Anywho, down both sides and along the bottom of the fins with be a heating element like in an oven. Beneath the heating element will be a pan. The element turns on now and then, melts off all the frost into the pan, and it runs down into an evaporation pan underneath the fridge. You’ve got to use your scraper to dislodge and bin all the extra ice, then unblock that drainage hole in the pan. Some boiling water poured slowly into the hole will get the ice out of it.
Now for the permanent fix - take your copper wire and wrap it around that heating element and position it so that it sorta sticks into the drainage hole a little. Some fridges don’t heat long or hot enough to ensure that drainage hole stays clear of ice. The copper wire fixes this. Be careful, the copper wire wrap is probably where you’re gonna slice knuckles.
Then just put everything back together and viola! You’ve restored yourself as the man of the house again.
Edit: I see now that you’d restore yourself as the woman of the house - also living in the same city I’ll come over and do it for you in exchange for wedge of Pilsner.
In some fridges, a steady drip of condensation from near the top is by design, and drips into a tiny little funnel that leads into the back, where a line conveys it to the drip pan underneath.
When you say the water is collecting at the “well at the bottom,” do you mean at the bottom of the interior, inside the fridge cabinet? (Not the drip pan which is underneath the fridge.)
If so, a common problem with this sort of design is that the drain tube (or the mini-funnel bit at the top) sometimes ices up. The quick fix for this is to get in there with a hair dryer to melt the ice, and maybe dial the thermostat a little more towards “warmer.” It may also be clogged with something, which would mean you’d have to take the tube out and clear it.
Please accept my apologies if this in no way describes what’s going on with your actual fridge and only serves to confuse you.
ETA: How is it possible that I didn’t see twat’s post? I don’t think it was twenty minutes since the page loaded. Am I getting that freaking slow?
No hard feelings. Us fridgies will never stand united if there is bickering amongst the ranks.