If you’ve ever purchased a refrigerator, you may have noticed water leaking from it at some point. It can be a confusing experience, leaving you wondering if you dropped a few ice cubes or if your house is about to flood. While you should have a regular preventative maintenance schedule for all of your home appliances, problems can still pop up seemingly out of the blue. Regardless of how you addressed this issue, it’s good to know the steps you should take if you notice that your refrigerator is leaking water.
Why Is It Leaking?
Having issues with your refrigerator can give you a bit of a nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach. A refrigerator is an intricate system, and common problems can range from a leaky hose to a blocked drain. Thankfully, these typically aren’t dangerous situations that can damage the refrigerator, but you definitely want to identify the issue as soon as you can, so they don’t damage your floors
Blocked Defrost Drain
Your refrigerator over time accumulates a substantial amount of ice and frost on the cooling system (evaporator). Back in the good old days, we needed to disconnect the refrigerator and let the ice melt or use heat to defrost it manually. Today, we have a defrost system. The refrigerator goes into a defrost cycle and melts off all the ice automatically with a heating element. This ice then turns into water and the water has to go down the defrost drain line.
Sometimes the drain line may become blocked or jammed due to a food particle, lint, or dust, and the water will leak into the refrigerator. This water will eventually find its way to your floor. A very easy way of telling if you have a clogged drain line is if you see you have a sheet of ice on the bottom of your freezer.
In order to unclog a drain line you will need to remove the backplate of the freezer called an evaporator cover, if you do not feel comfortable doing this, call FixEm Appliance Repair and we will send out a technician to help you out.
Problematic Water Supply Line
If you’ve addressed the above issues but still see leaks, you might want to check your water supply line. If you’ve been noticing problems with your ice maker or with the flow of drinking water, you might have found your culprit.
Pull your fridge from the wall and check the plastic hose in the back. If you notice water droplets on the outside of the hose, you have a leak. You could try to replace the line by yourself, but do not try to patch it, as this could cause even more issues down the line. These instances are better left to the pros, so we highly recommend contacting a specialist if you run into any water supply line problems.
Broken Drain Pan
The odds are that if your fridge is leaking water, your drain pan isn’t the issue, but occasionally homeowners find that fixing it solves the problem. Your drain pan collects the water that was defrosted from the refrigerator during the defrost cycle, which then evaporates. If there is a crack or damage, water can leak onto the floor beneath the refrigerator.
Replacing your drain pan is a hard thing to do with newer refrigerators since they are built-in and not removable like the old ones used to be. If you find that you have a broken drip pan, call a professional to take a look.
When Should I Contact a Pro?
When your fridge starts leaking, it can be tempting to call a professional to fix the problem for you immediately. Fortunately, many of the issues above can be remedied in a few hours or so with a bit of handiwork. But your fridge is very delicate and not something you want to make a mistake on and have to repair multiple times.
That’s why FixEm Appliance Repair has you covered. If you’re looking for refrigerator repair in Alameda County and want to stop seeing water on your floor, contact us today. We’re sure to have your fridge operating as good as new!
