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Our kitchen has an inbuilt fridge (which was there when we bought the house), however the little drain out the back keeps freezing over (the fridge is not very cold)and the bottom fills with water. All my other fridges had a little bit of plastic in the hole that I assume was there to stop this freezing happening. Did this bit of plastic stop the frost build up? If so can you get them separately and retrofit? What are they called? Can I make one out of anything else? It seems to be clogging up every couple of weeks and I don't really want to turn the fridge temperature down any more.
First ever Double Post - WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
I thought that kind of thing only happened to other people
That hole is there to allow the melt water from the back panel to drain away. Don't think it should ever be blocked.
On newer fridges there is usually a temp sensor attached to the back panel. When the back panel freezes up the sensor tells the fridge to defrost the panel and the melt water drains out through the hole into a reservoir behind/underneath the fridge.
Often the little hole just gets blocked with gack, poke it out and it should not keep any water there to freeze. An old spoke bent would do it, don't poke too far as the holes normally go to an evap tray on the compressor, which will have mains connections on it at some point and you don't want to go stabbing at them 🙂
Roach is correct, hole is a drain hole. Pipe goes down to the compressor/motor and fills a trough that sits on top of the compressor.
The heat from the compressor causes the water to evaporate.
If the trough inside the fridge is not free draining its normally black mold that has blocked the pipe up.
You need a thin wire (old net curtain wire is ideal) to clear the blockage. Then a teaspoon of bleach or two to kill the mold.
Soap and water after that to get rid of bleach smell.
Roach - my worry and problem that it is blocked! The melt water is just collecting under the salad crispers. I have managed to unblock it but it keeps refreezing so looking for a solution that stops it happening in the future
Have you unblocked it all the way? It kept happening to our fridge and it wasn't until I'd used 2 m of strimmer line (similar to the curtain wire in effect) and fed it through pulling it backwards and forward to "clean" the entire tube it finally sorted itself out. Still need to repeat it about once a year though.