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8/9/2019 8:48am
8/9/2019 8:48am
Edited Date/Time
8/20/2019 5:44pm
OK, all you appliance guys, hopefully you can help me with this one. I'm stumped!
I have an older (I'm guessing 10 years) Kenmore refrigerator with a built-in freezer. It's a side by side model; I don't know the number.
A year or two ago, my wife and I started noticing standing water on our kitchen floor. We eventually traced it back to the freezer, which had a pretty thick glacier of ice in the bottom. I figured it was buildup from the defrost cycle, so I busted it all up and swept out the ice (wow, that's a lot of ice,) and went about my business.
A few weeks later, we encountered the same thing. OK, now I'm thinking the water supply has a leak. I don't really care too much about the ice maker, so I turned the supply off and busted up the ice again. A few weeks later, same thing. Hmmm..... OK, maybe the water shutoff valve isn't working? Nope. I disconnected the hose and made sure the spigot wasn't leaking. Not a drop. Just for kicks, I left the tubing disconnected from the refrigerator. Now there is no possible way any water is getting inside that appliance. A few weeks later, and again I have a thick sheet of ice on the freezer floor. Was it just leftover water from the icemaker finally dripping out? Nope; it's been doing this regularly for at least a year now since I disconnected the water. There's nothing inside the freezer large enough to hold this volume of H2O.
Now here's where it gets really weird. There's still ice forming in the bottom of my freezer! It's clearly from when the freezer goes into defrost mode, because I can see the frozen rivulets coming down from behind the inside back panel where the freezer apparatus is. Ice melts, runs down, refreezes, etc. When there's enough, it melts on the defrost cycle and pours out the front of the freezer onto my kitchen floor. I just can't believe there's this much condensation in my freezer, though!!! This is happening about once every two weeks. There's no frost on the food or the shelving, no evidence of any spillage from anything, just a shit ton of ice in the freezer. We've been buying bags of ice and keeping them in the hopper but there's no evidence that the water is coming from there. I'm going to take all the ice out and keep it in our deep freezer instead to rule that one out anyway.
So where's the water coming from????
My glacier:
The broken ice:
Anyone need to fill a small swimming pool?
I have an older (I'm guessing 10 years) Kenmore refrigerator with a built-in freezer. It's a side by side model; I don't know the number.
A year or two ago, my wife and I started noticing standing water on our kitchen floor. We eventually traced it back to the freezer, which had a pretty thick glacier of ice in the bottom. I figured it was buildup from the defrost cycle, so I busted it all up and swept out the ice (wow, that's a lot of ice,) and went about my business.
A few weeks later, we encountered the same thing. OK, now I'm thinking the water supply has a leak. I don't really care too much about the ice maker, so I turned the supply off and busted up the ice again. A few weeks later, same thing. Hmmm..... OK, maybe the water shutoff valve isn't working? Nope. I disconnected the hose and made sure the spigot wasn't leaking. Not a drop. Just for kicks, I left the tubing disconnected from the refrigerator. Now there is no possible way any water is getting inside that appliance. A few weeks later, and again I have a thick sheet of ice on the freezer floor. Was it just leftover water from the icemaker finally dripping out? Nope; it's been doing this regularly for at least a year now since I disconnected the water. There's nothing inside the freezer large enough to hold this volume of H2O.
Now here's where it gets really weird. There's still ice forming in the bottom of my freezer! It's clearly from when the freezer goes into defrost mode, because I can see the frozen rivulets coming down from behind the inside back panel where the freezer apparatus is. Ice melts, runs down, refreezes, etc. When there's enough, it melts on the defrost cycle and pours out the front of the freezer onto my kitchen floor. I just can't believe there's this much condensation in my freezer, though!!! This is happening about once every two weeks. There's no frost on the food or the shelving, no evidence of any spillage from anything, just a shit ton of ice in the freezer. We've been buying bags of ice and keeping them in the hopper but there's no evidence that the water is coming from there. I'm going to take all the ice out and keep it in our deep freezer instead to rule that one out anyway.
So where's the water coming from????
My glacier:
The broken ice:
Anyone need to fill a small swimming pool?
Good luck and let us know what you find!
The Shop
Anyway, the drain was frozen solid. I melted it all out with hot water and made sure it flowed down to wherever. We'll see what happens now.
If it's draining, which can be checked by pouring some water down the tube or into the tray, which should then show in the pan at the bottom of the unit, I'd look at 2 other things.
First, the defrost timer. Once ever 24 hours that thing shuts itself down and brings in a set of electric heaters that melt the ice in the freezer compartment. They usually stay in for about 20 minutes. Most of the time it's a white plastic thing,
in the bottom of the unit by the drain pan. It will have a plug with about 4 wires going to it. If you think it's that, and is a lot of the time, there will be a small slot that you can advance the timer with. Put a mark on the slot, and one on the body of the timer, both lined up. Check back in 2 hours. It should make one complete turn in 24 hrs. If the marks are still lined up the timer is bad. The heaters that the timer feeds sometime go bad, but not usually.
All that works, clean drain, good timer, good possibility freon leak.
If it's that trash it and get new.
Good luck guy.
I am absolutely dumbfounded by the amount of ice that forms from condensation. There was enough ice in the bottom of the freezer after 5 days that if melted would probably fill two large glasses of water.
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