Water gathering in bottom of fridge.

milltown

I presume this is the best place to ask this.

Our fridge freezer (Hotpoint, standy up one, fridge on top, freezer below) has lately been gathering a bit of water in the bottom of the fridge. We've had it about three years but this has only been happening for the last few months. The water seems to be from condensate on the back wall of the fridge, running down and pooling in the bottom.
The result is, when we pull out the salad drawers we get water running out, some onto the floor and some stays on the door of the freezer where it seeps in and freezes and causes a big chunk of ice at the top of the freezer.

What I know about refridgeration tells me that whenever air is cooled, the dew point is lowered and a lot of the moisture will fall out of it. What I don't know is where, in a normal domestic fridge, this water is supposed to go. Should there be a channel somewhere to route it out towards the heat exchanger to evaporate back into open air?

I'd like to get a better idea of what the likely problem is before I resign myself to calling in an "appointed service agent".

Cushtie

we have an old hotpoint (Freezer Part on top, fridge on bottom) aswell and had exactly the same problem.

In the fridge part there somewhere in the back of it there should be a little drain hole, it may be blocked. get a cotton bud and free it out. it solved the problem for me. Although as I said ours is fairly old.

Alun

Like cushtie says, theres usually a little channel running along the back of the fridge with a small drain hole in the middle of it. This can get bunged up with "gunk" or sometimes even freeze up if you have the fridge temperature set very low. Behind the fridge, leading from this there's a small tube that normally runs into a small metal tray sitting on top of the compressor. The compressor gets hot in normal operation, so the small amount of water that is usually generated just evaporates away.

Clearing the drain hole out should suffice.

milltown

Thanks guys!
I'll take a look over the weekend.

skywalker_208

yea youll need to get a wire coat hanger down that hole to clear it out! had to do it myself a couple of times.. you would be surprised at the black crap that comes out...

noby

Lads, I've cleaned out that drain hole in the past. Recently there's a lot of condensation on the back of the fridge, and under the ice box. Is this all caused by the same blockage? I'll give it another cleaning anyway, and see.

luckat

By the way, apart from cleaning out the drain hole itself, the hole leads out the water into a disgusting scummy little basin that you can slide out of the back and wash. Unfortunately, most European fridges don't have wheels (doh!) so getting the fridge out from the wall requires the Incredible Hulk to be involved.

Wertz

Cushtie wrote:

we have an old hotpoint (Freezer Part on top, fridge on bottom) aswell and had exactly the same problem.

In the fridge part there somewhere in the back of it there should be a little drain hole, it may be blocked. get a cotton bud and free it out. it solved the problem for me. Although as I said ours is fairly old.

Used to have this problem too....what it ended up was happening was that the freezer cabinet was turned down pretty low and was leading to the run off condensation freezing in the little outlet pipe....turning the fast freeze button off helped, and running a piece of wire down the little drain every so often...

Victor

Also make sure the door seal is working properly, that extra air isn't getting in and the moisture condensing.