Freezer on bottom- floor filling with water & freezing/leaking out

Joe Fontana -

2 ways to clear frozen drain without removing any parts:

#1 You can simply unplug the refrigerator for 2 days with the doors open.

#2 You can also fill a turkey baster , squeeze bottle etc, with hot water and squeeze the hot water in the drain. Unplug the refrigerator. The drain is located at the bottom of the access panel on the back wall of freezer. You'll notice vents at the bottom of the panel. Shine a flashlight through the vents and you'll see the ice covering the drain pan. That's where the hot water goes. Once melted, squirt hot water into the drain hole until it's clear.

Never use a blow dryer! The heat will melt the liner and other components.

Be sure the refrigerator is "properly" leveled. It should be -3 degrees to the back and 0 side to side. This slight lean to the back ensures the doors close properly and that it drains to the back. Hope this helps.

There are several reasons for the drain to freeze up and several repairs.

Over time, slime will build up in the drain hose and create a nasty clog. Removing the ice and clog without replacing the drain hose doesn't always work.

Defrost heater too far from drain opening. Sometimes the heater warps just enough during normal use that the drain won't get enough heat to keep it thawed. Adding a heat sink clip to the defrost heater with the other end in the drain will solve this issue as well as extending the defrost time.

Choo3 suggested the repair kit. Excellent choice!

For freezers on the bottom models that are leaking water, icing/frosting up etc., more information is needed to solve the problem.

For my Kenmore bottom freezer what worked was marlenemccandless instructions that she posted on 05/02/2018, as well as LadyTech's advice to clean out the coils.

The freezer would get a thick 1-2 cm layer of ice at the bottom every few days, which would leak out on the kitchen flooring.

Defrosted it for 48 hours, no results.

As per marlenemccandless advice, removed back bottom panel from behind fridge, found the plastic drain slide (it's kind left of center, 15 cm or so from the rear edge of the fridge). Moved the top of the slide in order to find rubber nipple, removed it, found tons of dust and bits of paper, cleaned it out, vacuumed coils, bottom and everything else I could clean (lots of dust and grimy deposits).

24 hours later, not one speck of ice, whereas before I would have already had a thin sheet that would have begun forming.

Hope this helps fellow Kenmore bottom-freezer fridge owners.

I have a 15yr old son, 14 year old triplets, and for the last year an additional 15yr old boy. Plus my wife and myself. I have a stand up freezer, a 30yr old fridge in the garage and a big Ammana inside the house, all full.

Tricks I have learned:

I was taught by a repair guy/ friend who taught me about cleaning the coils. I use a long bottle nose brush like the one to clean lint out of the dryer. Do it often 1 X a year at least

Also, for outside units. I put a piece of plywood on top of the fridge with four 2x4 cuttings to keep the top of the fridge/freezer clear to diffuse heat and help keep airflow exits open to help it run smooth. Keep things from being against the sides to block air flow.

Finally, Try to not fill the fridge or freezer inside with too much food. If it is too full, it hurts air circulation. Learn where the drains are and vents are. BE the drain!

Become good friends with your repair guy. Giving him a soda and being nice, might get you a new tip.

I have a Maytag four door with the same problem, but I don't think the brand is important.

What matters is the location of the cooling fan. Mine is at the very bottom and you have to leave a space behind the refrigerator to allow the fan to do its job. Poor design in my opinion.

I've had the refrigerator in the same place for over two years without a problem but then decided to push it against the wall to give more room in the kitchen. After that I had water freezing in the bottom of the freezer.

I don't know if it would eventually clear itself if you just pull it about 2" to 3" from the wall or not. You might try it, but expect it to take at least a week to melt all the ice.

Some people asked how to get to the drain. It's not easy!!!

Remove everything from inside; door, upper and lower baskets, slides, and the back wall. Behind that is the evaporator and under it is the drain plug. Remove the majority of the ice manually and then place a fan to blow at the evaporator coils until everything is DRY.

Put everything back and make sure there is at least a two inch gap to the wall. Should be fine then.

Another thing. The condenser coils should be clean too. Mine are on the bottom so they get dirty easily. I had to put boards between the bottom of the refrigerator and the wall, about 2' to 2-1/2' long, and tilt it back. I placed automotive Jack stands under the front to keep it tilted. Then I used a vacuum to clean the coils.

This is a dangerous operation so be careful. You don't want the refrigerator to fall on its back if you tilt it too far or, even worse, fall on you. Could be DEADLY!!!

Whirlpool has released a drain tube kit to that is an improved design to the defrost drain tube to keep the defrost drain from clogging and freezing up on some Whirlpool, Kitchen Aid, Jenn Air, Maytag, and Amana refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom (single door and french door). The new kit uses a “P Trap” instead of the older style duck bill that commonly clogged up over time. Symptoms of the defrost drain getting clogged are that ice will build up on the bottom of the freezer floor and eventually it will start to leak a small amount of water out of the freezer door and onto the floor.

https://partsdr.com/blog/w10619951-updat...

Fixed mine, it is a 5 or 6 year old counter depth kitchenaid that has had this problem since new.

I tried posting this as a comment, but can't find it. Not a blogger! So here I go again.

The short story is level it from side to side and tilt it to the rear. But if your fridge is iced up you must completely thawed it first. Why? Because theoreticly, the reason the water is getting to the bottom of the freezer is because the drain hole in the drain pan is frozen over and will not thaw during defrost, due to excessive ice buildup. When a freezer of this design is leaning left or right the water from defrosting remains on the left or right instead of going out the drain which is in the middle of the pan. This pan is only about .25 in. Deep at the front. Water left standing after defrost refreezes and grows with each subsequent defrost causing drain to freeze shut and water to run over the pan and into the freezer compt. Leaning to the rear slightly is because the pan is deeper at the rear. These theories and conclusions are my own, all I can say for certain is it worked for me. I hope it helps others.

sears is made by mytag and they have a technical bulletin on it. W10632338A. It would show you that a recall on the duck bill drain they use was the problem of heat causing it to stick closed, water would build on bottom until the ice was taller then the bin and then would leak out. I had the same problem and busted sears with phone calls, they sent the part out and in 20 minutes I had it in and no problem since.

Someone wrote in and said he had his unit for four years and then it started having this problem and accused it of being a design problem. Well, if it worked fine for four years it's not a design problem. Something has to have happened to make it have problems after that long.

After first fixing mine the problem came back. After cleaning the ice out again I pulled it out from the wall and took out the 'duck bill' valve, or rubber nipple, and it was clogged with dog hair. Yes I have two dogs. I cleaned it out and cleaned the fan blades and everything else I could find.

Works great now. And it's quieter too. That's from cleaning the fan blades.

I have struggled with this issue for months, and I have defrosted for 2 days (with my freezer this consists of taking everything out of the freezer), and as someone stated, this is just a temporary fix. Its very annoying and time consuming only to have it continue.

Since I always use the internet to fix appliances, I thought I should add my fix.

My evaporator motor was also getting noisy, the fan was hitting the motor - design flaw. Once I replaced the evaporator motor I no longer have any water/ice in the bottom of my freezer. It makes sense, a bad evaporator motor not doing it's job allows the defrost water to accumulate. I am not a pro, but since I replaced the motor and the fan blade, I have NO WATER at the bottom of my freezer, and now my freezer is a lot quieter! I hope this helps someone, because I get a lot of help from other people out there!

Oh, and the evaporator motor was very easy to install, and costs about $90!

I am going to share my story of how I fixed my Bosch KGN53X00AU. It had worked well for about 5 years until one day a layer of ice started forming at the bottom of the freezer compartment. After breaking and cleaning the ice for several weeks I started looking for information of forums. Defrosting did not help. Customer support line was totally useless.

Finally I decided to fix it myself. Nothing was wrong inside, so I decided to check the drain pipe at the back of the fridge.

Before going into the details I would like to remind you where the water comes from. If we look at how a fridge works (http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~in...) we can see two heat exchangers internal (blue) and external (red):

Water from the air freezes on the internal heat exchanger and can forms a thick layer of ice. Back in the old days people had to defrost their fridge regularly to remove that ice. Modern fridges do it automatically. The internal heat exchanger has a heating inside which is periodically turned on by the controller during defrost cycle.

The ice melts and the water runs down a special drain pipe outside of the fridge camera into a special tray at the back of the fridge. Usually they put this tray on top of the external heat exchanger (red one on the picture). This exchanger is hot, so the water quickly evaporates back into the room.

If the drain pipe is blocked the water leaks where it can. I my case it leaked into the freezer camera and got frozen at the bottom. If the pipe is blocked with frozen water defrosting may help. Unfortunately, something else was blocking my pipe.

First of all I looked at the back of my fridge:

That plastic grey panel is easy to remove by pulling it from the sides.

Now we can see the black pump on the right and heat exchanger with the plastic water tray on top of it on the left.

If you look closer you will see a plastic disk inside that tray. The drain pipe was inside that disk, but I could not remove the disc because there was not enough space. In order to remove it I had to lay the fridge on the floor (be very careful not to drop it) and unscrew the plank that holds the heat exchanger.

That gave me enough room to remove the plastic disk:

The drain pipe can be seen here right above the tray:

The disk is a water seal and the problem was right in it. It was clogged with some jelly like substance, so the water could not run through it. I cleaned it up:

After assembling all the parts back the fridge works like new.

Actually, a friend told me to tilt it backwards by adjusting the front levelers down. Easily done with pliers or someone pushing back at top. About half inch makes doors shut quicker. That was how he noticed that level was too level. Needs to slant slightly to back. It has been over three weeks without issue. Works great! Made in 1994 and kitchenaid model ksrs22qaaL10 going strong!

I have had this problem for a year now and did the scraping by pouring warm water and pulling out the big sheet. I got so sick of always having water dripping out of the freezer. Luckily I have tile floors or I would have had to take action quicker. I found this YouTube video of an appliance repair man walking through the steps of what to do. In his video he takes the grommet(filled with gunk) and replaces it with a bigger one. I purchased a P-trap line off Amazon and will be installing that instead. It prevents the warm air from getting in and will not be able to stop it up. It appears that is the fix these companies came up with but did not feel that it was a defect and needed to be given to everyone. It was super easy to take all the parts out and my freezer will be completely ice free-hopefully! I am waiting on the part to be delivered and will let you know after the installation how it went.

Links to both YouTube videos: https://youtu.be/Sn1yimizKWA

https://youtu.be/LN6Db6CWry0

UPDATE: I was able to install the P-Trap fairly easily. The most difficult part was getting the old pipe under the duck bill out, it was so dry it was stuck in good. Sure enough the duckbill had just a little bit of gunked up hair/dust in it, but that sucker hasn't opened in a long time. As soon as I took it off, water came down and began filling the basin, as I had melted it hoping to see it come down with the duck bill. After installing the new one, I sent more water down there and heard it sucking the water through the pipe like a kitchen sink. So far so good, nothing has built up anywhere in the freezer and the pipe is still clear at the back.

Brand: Panasonic, Model: NR-BU343SS1N (Freezer at Bottom, Frost Free type)

Problem: water overflows and ice formation at bottom of freezer compartment at left rear side. accumulating every day.

attempt 1: ice removed, drain pipe checked , some part of condenser pushed towards rear side to avoid spillage out side etc and boxed up

problem not solved.

attempt 2: fridge levelled but problem not solved

attempt 3: searched on internet where it is mostly pointing towards drain pipe chokage or mysteriously problem not getting solved ; but when inspected again after 2 days of keeping the fridge power off with doors open. I have poured lot of water inside the tray to check chokage but no choakage was found.

Hence probable causes were listed out.

1) design problem (It was ruled out, as it was working for 4 years flawless)

2) Drain pipe chokage

3) Drain collection tray (below condenser, inside fridge from where drain pipe starts) crack

4) Dislocated drain collection tray

5) Dislocated condenser tubes from design centre

Further it was observed the lowest point on sides of drain tray (from where it can overflow) is at centre, but ice formation was at left rear side, that means it is not the tray overflow due to its drain pipe chokage.

Hence a bottle with 6 inch hose pipe was prepared and water was sprayed at different locations over the condenser tubes. It was observed that whenever water is sprayed towards rear, the seepage was observed from left. when the condenser pulled towards front the seepage stopped. Hence the condensed was misaligned, so its alignment was done so that it stays at center (expected design center) of drain tray (drain tray size is larger than condenser spillage area during heating cycle of defrosting) at this condition fridge was boxed up- now the problem is solved.

It was under observation for 5 weeks and the problem was not repeated.

And sometimes that cleanout will not help. Then the problem is a too short heating clip at the bottom of the heater inside the freezer. Got to take off the back panel inside the refrigerator to fix it but when you replace the short clip with a longer one that should do it.

Samsung DA61-06796A Drain Clip

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Samsung-DA61-...

I’m having this problem (freezing water in bottom of freezer compartment.) So far, I have only seen solutions for brands that are not mine. I have a Frigidaire French door/freezer on bottom with ice maker in the freezer type unit. Any suggestions for this type?

So I read elsewhere that I can periodically hit it with a hair dryer on medium low. We have done it about every two weeks on average when the half inch deep pan is mostly full and frozen. Previously we had a repairman change defrost control in freezer. The coils do not freeze up as they did with the other situation. Still looking for a real solution. Ours is old, not looking to replace just yet, but teetering on the precipice.

If your refrigerator has a long panel inside in the back of the refrigerator I suggest removing it to see why the water does not drain. On mine a metal tab was wrapped around a heating coil to allow the water to drain and not freeze. Only trouble was the metal tab was not long enough to keep the water from freezing. Longer ones are available online that will solve this problem. I got one, installed it and it solved my problem.

Water leaking out the bottom of Kitchen Aid refridgerator bottom freezer type. Below freezer baskets there is a sheet of solid ice.

First the fridge is backed into a slot between the countertop and the wall and pushed up against the back wall. This is a problem because with a bottom freezer the motor is on the bottom of the fridge instead of on the back like normal refrigerators and this is a dust and guck magnet that clogs everything including the ventilation system. This is where the problem starts, like there nothing's working right in the automatic defrost area. So I turned the whole fridge off. Took the baskets out of the freezer. Put a hot towel on the frozen over the bottom freezer. Put a fan on high to defrost anything behind the back plastic wall for a half hour. Now I am hooking the lint getter that is used for the dryer vent, its an attachment that you put on the hose part of your vacume. I am on the floor vacuuming underneath the refridgerator until it is clean. The heat from the vacume and the air from the fan seemed to help all alround. Now putting it all back together and turning it on. Whallah aside from that if I have another problem I will unclog the drain on the back, which has happened before.

Hi If I Take Out Everything In My Freezer

And Put A Pan Of Hot water. Would That Help Unglog My Freezer? I Live A Lone My Refrigerator Is Very Heavy For Me To Pull out.

Jan 31 2021 Had this same issue for a few months on a 21 yr ge side by side Cleaned the visible drain in the freezer numerous times but did not take the inside panel off the back of the freezer and check I remembered my husband who was a appliance tech talking about flushing out the drain. He is deceased. Today I lucked out and opened it while it was in defrost I could see it all red above the vent so I knew that the defrost heater was working It was pouring water. The drain was not froze up when I did it, but had been, because again, ice on the bottom. I used a teaspoon of baking soda and two cups of water and basted into the drain ( as told how to do on another site. I never heard of the baking soda part) I had cleaned the fan and coils last month but did it again This time the water did run into the water tray under the fridge I had never seen water in there the other times I put water in the drain . I hope this works. Maybe you have to do it in defrost mode to make sure the frozen water leaves the drain . It didn't work when I unplugged the unit overnight after doing it.

you should defrost your freezer 2x's monthly - didn't your dad/mom teach you this?

My parents did this and never had a problem; I have followed and my freezer is strong 15 years later

I had the exact same problem, The water seal or valve can be removed without laying the machine down by first removing drain pan and fan assembly. Also after cleaning etc, I did not replace the water seal/valve as it does not appear to serve any useful purpose.