So, the alarm went off to say I hadn’t shut my freezer drawer. The freezer is a separate unit in the fridge, a drawer under the refrigeration section.
Tried to shut the drawer and it wouldn’t shut.
“Hmm,” sez I to myself. That happens when food is jammed in the drawer and keeps it from closing. So I started emptying the drawer and trying to shut it.
Empty the drawer out completely, still won’t shut.
“Hmm. Maybe something fallen behind the drawer?”
Pull the drawer all the way out. Don’t see anything. Except the back is sort of shiny.
I get a flashlight. Yes, the ice on the back wall of the freezer compartment is very shiny.
“Wait! Ice?!? Why is there ice on the back wall?”
There’s some sort of unit in the back wall. Is that where the heat exchange happens? At any rate, it looks like that’s where the ice started forming. And then it drained down to the floor of the compartment and froze under the drawer.
So I start tapping on it with my hand. I’m a prairie boy, who’s gone through many winters. I can tell right away that this isn’t a light coating of ice. It’s thick.
I reach in and try to break off the ice. No go. I sigh and get a hammer. I start tapping gently on the ice. Don’t want to crack the casing and release the freon, or whatever it’s called nowadays.
I didn’t need to be so gentle. This is hard, hard ice. I continue tapping until it finally starts cracking. And I start pulling out the pieces of ice. The biggest piece is about 6 inches long, 3 inches back to front, and about 3 inches deep! Other chunks are almost as impressive.
After much tapping and scavenging, I’ve filled my biggest mixing bowl, the one for bread dough, twice! Empty the bowl into the side sink, filling it up with chunks of ice.
And now the light starts to dawn. Twice recently, I’ve found puddles of water by the freezer. I’ve blamed it on the exuberant water-drinking habits of Piper Dog, whose water bowl is right beside the freezer. But was that water actually leaking from the freezer?
I see two options:
-
The drawer was sticking open a bit, and that let water vapour start to congeal into ice, which kept the door open a bit more, and the cycle accelerated , with water condensing and forming more ice and then liquid water leaking out the open drawer, until finally the ice was so thick the drawer wouldn’t shut, triggering the alarm.
-
There’s something wrong with the heat exchange and water is leaking directly into the freezer, causing the ice build-up, blocking the drawer open, and leaking out.
The difference is that if it was Option 1, cleaning out the ice should have solved the problem.
But if it’s Option 2, I need to call The Fridge Repair Squad, at considerable monetary expense.
Counting in favour of Option 1 is that the food in the freezer is all frozen, which I don’t think would be the case if the heat exchange weren’t working.
What say you, Learned Dopers?