Common fault
Why is there water under my refrigerator?
Short answer
The color of the water tells you which repair you are looking at.
Why we start there
If it is cloudy and there is a sheet of ice sitting on the freezer floor, the defrost drain has frozen shut and the tray is overflowing inside the cabinet. If it is clean, the line feeding the ice maker has gone, almost always at a fitting behind the unit. Both are small repairs. What makes them expensive is time, because everything underneath a built-in is cabinet base, subfloor and flooring.
What happens next
Hard water is why the fitting side of this fault turns up more here than it does closer to the coast. Mineral works into the compression joints and the inlet valve seat, the seal stops sealing, and a weep starts behind the unit where nothing shows on the floor for weeks. When we replace a line, the fittings go with it rather than getting reused.
The version that costs real money happens in a house that is empty. Grove properties, weekend places and families away on orders from Camp Pendleton all produce the same call: a drain iced over in week one, three weeks of quiet overflow, and nobody through the door until it is finished. If the house is going to sit, get the drain checked first.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Reviews
We're on a well and the cubes came out small and hollow. Two other outfits had been out and both wanted to sell us a new ice maker. He measured the water at the valve, found the screen silted up, and that was that.
- ★★★★★
Our wine cabinet is built into a bar area nobody air conditions and by the end of August the panel was showing its setpoint while the bottles were four or five degrees warm. He put a probe in with them, cleaned the condenser and opened up the air behind the cabinet. Fine since.
- ★★★★★
My husband was away on orders and we'd shut the house up for three weeks. Came back to water at the kick plate. The defrost drain had frozen shut and the tray had been quietly running over that whole time. He cleared it and showed me the cabinet base underneath.
Appliance down in North County San Diego?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Is a built-in this old worth repairing, or should we be replacing it?
Repair usually wins, and the deciding factor is the opening rather than the appliance. A built-in is sized to a cabinet cut and wears a door panel made for that kitchen, so replacing one is a carpentry question first. What fails is ordinary: fan motors, defrost heaters, thermistors, gaskets, ice maker modules. The sealed system, the one failure that ends a built-in, almost never goes.
How soon can someone actually get out to Fallbrook, Bonsall or Valley Center?
The line is answered around the clock, seven days a week, and same-day visits are normal when the diary allows it. We would rather tell you the truth about today than book a window we cannot hold. What decides one visit versus two is the part, not the schedule, so describe the symptom precisely and the right component leaves with the technician.