I have a Kenmore fridge with an ice maker. Recently, I started noticing water puddled on the shelves and in the bottom. I thought maybe it was just condensation, cleaned it up, and carried on.
A few days later, more water. The ice maker has been acting weird lately, making hollow ice cubes and/or not working at all, so I thought perhaps a problem with that was the issue. Had my son close the water valve to the ice maker, voila!
Except it didn’t work–three days later, I still have puddles of water in the fridge. It’s obviously coming from above the top shelf and making its way to the bottom, where it pools in that little…well, pool-shaped thingy.
My Vote: Your fridge is not getting cold enough. This is either from the seal on the door going bad, the door not closing properly, the thermostat being too high (or going bad), or the condenser is not working right.
Check some of those and try back. I’ll google and see what I find.
Does your fridge have a horizontal or v-shaped drip tray attached to the rear inside wall? If so, that might be what’s blocked up and causing the extra water.
Or, your fridge is on the sick-list entirely, and the ice-maker is just the first part that is failing.
herman_and_bill have it, at least the part about the standing water. If you look at the pool, near the center shouild be a hole about 3/8" in diameter that looks kind of like a rubber washer (frequently white). Attached to the underside of this hole should be a short rubber tube (where you probably can’t see it) that drains into a shallow, usually plastic pan that slides out from behind the kick plate under the door. This pan sits on top of part of the heat exchanger coil which is usually warm to the touch when the refrigerator is running. Under normal conditions, melt from the automatic defroster passes through a thin vertical tube at the rear of the 'fridge and drains into the pool area, down through the hole, and into the pan where the mild heat from the heat exchanger coil evaporates it. Frequently meat juices and other spilled liquids and semi-lequids will also find their way to this drain hole where a little bacterial action will quickly turn this soup into a festering plug that dams up the drainage. A few deft jabs with a soda straw or similarly sized/shaped object will usually return things to operational status, but the Felix Ungers among you will probably want to be a bit more conscientious about the process.
As to why the ice cubes are hollow, the answer is probably above somewhere, but my guess is there is no cause/effect associated with the drain problem, merely coincidence.
I haven’t found a drain yet, but I’m still looking…it’s not right in the bottom of the fridge, below the slideouts, the way I would expect…
But I’m finding water on all of the shelves, too, so I think it can’t be just a plugged drain, right? The water seems to be dripping from the top, although I can’t tell where it’s originating.
Condensation? I turned off the water to the ice maker, so I don’t know what else it could be at this point…
I can so NOT afford to have someone come in and work on this thing.
Ah, now it’s beginning to sound more like a badly leaking door gasket (or warped door), all the more likely if you have a model old enough NOT to have a floor drain. That would be letting relatively large quantities of ambient humid air into the cooling compartment where the moisture content of the air is condensing on the cool surfaces, but, IANAAR.
The water collector cup and hose is stopped up. (like the others said) On your model fridge the cup and hose might be up top near the light, and behind a plastic guard that you will need a screw driver to remove. The drain could be stopped up with ice or algae or both.
Ah HA. This may be it…I can tell the water is coming from the area of the light. The thermostat is also there, and when Elderpoet took it apart because it wouldn’t move, it was frozen in place.
SO…I’ll have him take it apart again today and see what he can find.
The gasket may also be bad, although the fridge isn’t that old. Well, it’s about 6 years–not sure how that translates in modern fridge years.
Thanks again, folks…any ideas, of course, still welcome, and I’ll let you know how the exploratory surgery today goes.
