Why is there water under my refrigerator?

The reasoning behind that

Ice across the floor of the freezer, with murky water turning up at the front, is a defrost drain frozen shut and meltwater backing up where it should not be. Clear water at the front, with no ice anywhere in the cabinet, is a fitting that has given way on the ice maker supply. Both repairs are minor. In a Point Loma house with a narrow galley kitchen and wood beneath the floor, what the water gets into while a decision is being made is not minor at all.

How the diagnosis goes

Deal with the supply side today, because it does not pause for anybody. That line stays pressurized for as long as the appliance is plugged in and connected, so when a fitting goes it is not a drip, it is a feed. Find the shutoff, usually beneath the sink or in the cabinet alongside the unit, close it, and then call us. In plenty of Loma Portal, Wooded Area and Ocean Beach kitchens the refrigerator sits in a tight cabinet run, and water travels along under the base of that run before it surfaces, so the small pool you can see at one end says very little about the wet area you cannot.

The drain fault works on a slower clock. Defrost makes water by design, and that water is meant to leave through a narrow tube at the back of the freezer floor and land in a shallow pan above the machinery, where waste heat boils it away. Ice in the tube removes the exit. The water then freezes where it stands, a layer at a time, and weeks later a warm afternoon melts enough of it to run out under the door. Opening the tube, and testing the small heater on the models built with one, is the repair. Going at the ice with a screwdriver is a two-week reprieve and nothing more.

If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.

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