{"id":2598,"date":"2018-03-06T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T20:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/?p=2598"},"modified":"2025-05-13T16:48:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T00:48:37","slug":"samsung-refrigerator-dripping-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/blog\/samsung-refrigerator-dripping-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Samsung Refrigerator Dripping Water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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We have a Samsung RS261MDBP refrigerator, which is a side-by-side, frost-free model, with the freezer on the left, and refrigerator on the right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Samsung
The red circle near the bottom right of the freezer was where the leak was.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One day, I noticed a puddle of water on the floor under the freezer. Since it was on the side with the water\/ice dispenser, my first thought was that it might be the dispenser leaking. But then I opened the freezer door and noticed a frozen stream of water coming from inside the freezer. The freezer was still plenty cold, so I doubted it could be something melting. I took out the bottom drawer of the freezer, and then noticed a solid sheet of ice at the bottom of the freezer. I removed all the ice, and the problem went away for about a day, but then two days later, it was back, and so was the ice sheet. I never actually witnessed the water actively dripping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, nothing to do but roll up my sleeves, move all the food out of the freezer into an ice chest, and figure out what fed that ice sheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"detail
The shelves and drawers have been removed from the freezer. It’s hard to see, but there’s a frozen stream of ice to the left of the red line. At one time, this was probably flowing liquid water that filled the floor of the freezer, and leaked out the door onto the floor of the room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"leak
The stream of ice appears to originate from behind that white panel, in the area indicated by the red circle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A bit of an aside as to how (I think) a frost-free freezer works. About once a day, a heater coil turns on for 5 minutes to melt off any frost that may have accumulated on the freezer coils. That water drips down into a pan under the refrigerator, where a fan evaporates it into the air. If that defrosting was happening at 3 am, it would explain why I never witnessed any actual dripping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"appearance
There are 2  white plastic caps concealing screws at the top of the panel, and 4 more screws on the sides. The screws were removed, and the panel pulled straight out. If there was any sticking, it was because of a small amount of ice buildup holding the panel in place.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"freezer
With the cover removed, the freezer coils can be seen. The black heating element at the bottom is the defroster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"coil
The black heating coil is actually embedded in ice. My feeling was that the coil must have been working to some extent, since there was water dripping onto the floor. But perhaps the coil was not melting ALL the ice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"defroster
A hair dryer and some warm water melted the ice enough to be removed, revealing a previously unseen drain. There was still a solid plug of ice in the drain at this point.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
I poured hot water on the drain, but it just didn’t unclog. The actual drain goes back slightly, then makes a right angle down. I think cold water was insulating the last plug of ice from being melted. I was able to insert a straw, and blow air into the drain. I think this mixed up the cold water with warm, because a few seconds after I did it, the drain cleared. The first time I did this, I simply poured hot water and waited – it took hours to thaw. Use the straw, or a piece of plastic tubing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
When using flexible 1\/4″ plastic tubing to blow out the drain, I was able to insert it almost 5 inches when the drain was clear. So if you encounter resistance at less than that, there is still an ice plug present – keep blowing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The inserted chopstick shows the angle of the drain, about 45 degrees.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"defroster
On the back of the refrigerator, I removed 5 screws, and lifted the lower back cover out. That revealed the 1\/2″ soft plastic drain pipe, matching the drain in the previous picture. Since the cover was off, I took the opportunity to vacuum the dust off the compressor cooling coils, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

PRO TIP:<\/strong> It might be tempting to not bother taking the back cover off as above, but doing so will really save time and aggravation. The only sure way to check if the drain is clear is to look for water coming down into the pan at the bottom of the black tube. I heard a “glug, glug, glug” sound initially, but nothing was actually coming out. Only when I blew air in with the straw did I see water drain quickly into the pan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elapsed time to fix, including moving frozen food to another freezer and ice chest: 2.5 hours. I left the refrigerator food in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most likely, the drain had been clogged with ice, more than the defroster could melt in 5 minutes. I melted and cleaned out every bit of ice that I could see, and made sure that when I poured a half cup of water into the drain, it freely flowed into the evaporation pan under the fridge. Success. I put everything back together, and it’s been working fine for a month, now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how did this situation come about in the first place? My theory is that the freezer door had been open for a LONG time in humid weather, as we were reorganizing the freezer. Possibly, that gave an excessive amount of frost a chance to accumulate, and block the defroster drain.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

UPDATE: <\/strong>The fix worked for about a year, then the problem came back. Cleared the drain again, and the problem came back after a few weeks. It occurred to me that what might help would be something to defrost the drain itself. I later realized that someone else had come up with the same solution before me, and posted this<\/a> on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
I’ve added a length of stranded copper wire. I used #8, which cost 98\uffe0per foot at Home Depot. #8 is probably overkill; I could have just used some stranded wire from the line cord of some broken appliance. I pushed the wire as far down the drain as it would go, so about 5 inches. I also untwisted the individual strands to wrap around the defroster element. I’m hoping I didn’t make a miscalculation and burn up the refrigerator. However, after about a week, it seems to be okay – no burn smell.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have a Samsung RS261MDBP refrigerator, which is a side-by-side, frost-free model, with the freezer on the left, and refrigerator on the right. One day, I noticed a puddle of water on the floor under the freezer. Since it was on the side with the water\/ice dispenser, my first thought was that it might be … Continue reading Samsung Refrigerator Dripping Water<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[263,262,260,264,234,259,258,230,261],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3343,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions\/3343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}