Fridge follies

[sudsmaster]

About 20 years ago I replaced the old GE fridge in the enclosed patio (nothing special, 80's era) with a more efficient unit. I got a Kitchenaid SxS for the main house kitchen, and decided to get a top freezer KA for the enclosed patio.

 

Well, the patio fridge is OK. I was a bit worried after I got it that it wasn't keeping the freezer cold enough. It was under extended warranty so I got out a tech to look into it. She fiddled with the temp control, but I didn't quite gather what she did. She did make some comment about "that's as much as I can do", and left.

 

A year later I started noticing something ugly - the smooth curved stainless exterior of the fridge and freezer doors was started to cave inward. Not a lot, but enough to notice. I contacted KA again and basically got nowhere - they wanted to send somebody out for a fee to look at it. I figured it was a manufacturing error - they didn't let the foam sprayed between the inner and outer doors cure long enough, and it shrunk, pulling the sheet metal on the exterior inward. You can also see this caving on the sides and top of the fridge. Oh well. I finally decided since it still cooled OK, and it was on a patio, to just live with it.

 

But this spring I started noticing something amiss - some 18 years later. Water puddling on the shelves inside the fridge. This went on for  a few months before today when I got around to investigating the issue.

 

I wound up removing most of the contents of the freezer and the fridge. I took apart the controls and saw that there really wasn't any adjustment one could make to make the fridge portion cool more than the lowest setting.

 

Pulled the sliding shelf from the lower part of the freezer compartment. This number is a plastic tray on rollers. A nice touch, but one I rarely use. Go figure . Anyway one it was out, along with the panel beneath it that holds the rollers, I saw the problem. Defrost water had frozen solid on the bottom of the freezer, including in the little narrow tray at the back. I gently pried loose those segments that would come free, then got out the hair dryer. Once I got the little tray ice free, I could see that the drain opening on the center right wasn't draining. Water just puddled there.

 

Got out the shop vac with appropriate attachments and tried to suck as much water as possible out of the drip tray. Then I heated up some water, poured that in, and still no draining. I could also see that the drip pan under the fridge was bone dry. So I sucked out the warm water and added more, let it sit, came back and it looked like it had finally drained. Added more just to be sure. And confirmed there was now some water in the drip pan under the fridge.

 

Took a while to button everything back up, but it's probably OK for a while now. Got the thing running again and need to go back out and put stuff I removed back in. After I pull more shelving from the fridge compartment and clean off the shelving there, that is ;-).

 

Oh, and the fridge is a Kitchenaid KTRC22MJSS01. Mfg 02-01. Bought from Airport Appliance, who wouldn't lift a finger to help when I told them about the caving. They won't get any more of my business.

 

 

[DADoES]

 
I have a KTRS21KFAL00 (1997 17th week) that was relegated to garage use when I moved to this house in Jan 2005.

Only trouble thus far is replacement of the freezer light bulb.

The ice maker hadn't been used since the move and was transplanted to the parents' KTRP20MDWH00 (1995 12th week) several years ago.  No repairs on it except the ice maker swap (I don't know about light bulbs).

 

[combo52]

Freezer drain ice blockage

Hi Rich, this is a very good refrigerator, WP as well as many other manufactures both here and abroad have problems with urethane foam insulation shrinking sometimes which causes the inward buckling of doors and walls of many refs, there is nothing you can do about it and it does not hurt the performance noticeably.

 

The iced over drain in the freezer is by far the most common problem we see with these refs, we probably fix this problem several times a week.

 

We fix it by defrosting the drain and get hot water flowing down it and then fashion a 12 ga copper heat probe bent around the defrost heating element and extending at least 1" into the drain, this will keep the problem from coming back.

 

You can just defrost the drain very throughly and it might not come back for a long time or it might happen again within a month or so.

 

John L.

 

[sudsmaster]

John,

 

Thanks so much for that info!

 

I think I may have precipitated the problem by turning both the freezer and fridge controls full cold last fall. Since the fridge is in an unheated enclosed patio, that probably encouraged the icing of the drain. I've reset them to mid-range and AFAIK that setting doesn't cause the icing/drain clog problem.

 

I didn't get as far as exposing the evaporator/defrost coils, but if it does happen again I'll have to do that, I guess. The 12 ga copper wire (solid I presume) is a great idea, would not have thought of that.

 

On the plus side, the freezer and fridge interior is now pretty clean. Now I just have to spiff up the exterior.

 

One thing that sucks about the foam shrinkage problem is that I wanted this fridge because of the attractive convex door curve design, in stainless. When the foam shrank it turned the door profile into a kind of funky ridge. But yes, it still cools OK. It's just not what I thought I paid for. And, as an aside, when I got the fridge I joked with the salesman, who I think was the owner. Initially when I asked about the fridge, he said it was not available. Then he started bragging about all his kids and grandkids. I joked, "Are you sure they are all yours?". He looked kind of irritated, and a few minutes later, he said brightly, "Guess what, the fridge is available after all." He didn't say there was a problem.   I figure he knew about the foam shrinkage/exterior caving problem, but got PO'd about my joke. Of course I can't prove it, but in future all my appliance purchases will be at Costco or other big retailer. Not Airport Appliance. And I'm not sure I'll be buying KA either.

 

 

 

[sudsmaster]

Glenn,

 

I have upgraded all the bulbs in my fridges and freezers to LED's. Less power draw, less heat for the fridge to chill again. And they mostly look OK.

 

 

[goatfarmer]

I did that same repair on my FIL's Kenmore about 3 years ago. Been working fine since.

 

[DADoES]

 
Granny had a vertical no-name freezer (Woods, I guess) that within the first year repeatedly clogged the defrost drain with ice build-up.  I fussed enough to the local dealer that they swapped it for essentially the exact same unit but branded Maytag.  It developed the same issue so I did the copper-wire trick.  It never again exhibited the problem.

 

[vacerator]

watching the follies

on youtube was how I discovered aw.org.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I got lots of wire. Mostly 14 ga, but that would probably work just as well.

 

Meanwhile I'm keeping the temp in the mid range. No sense in tempting fate...

 

 

[sudsmaster]

One thing with this fridge I've had to be careful about: about five years ago I was storing a lot of stuff on top of the fridge. I didn't  think it would matter. Then I started noticing that the inner top of the freezer compartment was weeping, dotted with big droplets. I reasoned that there must be coils up there designed to give off heat, and the stuff I put on top were preventing that heat from escaping. I now keep the top mostly clear, save for a few items that don't contact the exterior of the top very much. Since then no more raining inside the freezer. Just the damn defrost drain clog.

 

 

 

[combo52]

Reply #9

Hi Rich, there are no coils on the top to get rid of heat, you can store all the stuff you want on top of this and most other refs, if fact it adds to the insulation of the ref to have boxes etc on top and will actually make it more efficient.

 

I suspect that you had a box or something that was slightly keeping the freezer door open a little which is what caused the condensation etc.

 

We see refs loaded on top all the time and it never causes any problems like you describe.

 

John L.

 

[sudsmaster]

John,

 

Well, that's what I thought. In fact I had cut a 1" thick piece of styrofoam wall insulation to put on top of the fridge. However when I found the condensation inside the freezer compartment, I removed the foam panel and let the freezer run free.

 

And no, there was no door blockage. I would have noticed and corrected that.