Common fault
Why is there water under my refrigerator?
Short answer
Water under a built-in comes from one of two places.
Why we start there
Either the defrost drain has iced closed and melt water is backing up inside the cabinet until it runs out beneath the door, or the line feeding the ice maker or the dispenser has failed at a fitting. Clear water sitting toward the front points at the plumbing; cloudy water with ice on the freezer floor points at the drain. Both are small repairs, and neither one stops until somebody opens the unit up. In a dry valley house the plumbing version regularly goes unnoticed for weeks, because a slow drip evaporates off tile nearly as fast as it lands and leaves a chalky ring instead of a puddle.
What happens next
If you have found a white or gray outline under the unit and no standing water at all, that is still a leak. It has simply been drying as quickly as it arrives, and in the meantime it has been running down the back of the cabinet and into the subfloor, where nothing evaporates. This is the fault we would far rather hear about today than next week. The repair itself is a fitting, a valve, or a drain that needed clearing. The floor is not, and on the engineered wood and stone that goes into these kitchens the damage overtakes the cost of the repair within a few days of getting started.
On the visit the drain gets traced from the evaporator down to the tray and flushed properly rather than poked at, along with the drain heater on the models that carry one. Then every fitting from the shutoff through to the inlet valve, including a saddle valve if the installation predates a proper stop, and the valve body itself for weeping. The door seal comes last, because condensation forming at a gasket leak looks exactly like a drain problem by the time it has reached the floor. If the unit stands on stone and the water is finding a grout line rather than pooling, mention it when you call. It changes how quickly we need to be there.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Reviews
What Temecula customers say
Fridge in our Redhawk kitchen went warm every afternoon and looked normal again at breakfast, so two other companies told us to just watch it. He asked what time it happened, pulled the grille, and the coil was packed solid. Cleaned it and changed the fan behind it.
Ice had been getting worse for about a year, small hollow things that crushed between two fingers. I assumed the maker was finished. He measured pressure at the valve, found the fill tube half closed with scale, and that was the whole story. Water out here is hard.
The chest freezer in our Harveston garage kept frosting up again after I cleared it. The defrost heater had quit and the drain was icing at the outlet. He explained why a garage on this side of the hills works one of these far harder than the kitchen unit does.
Rated 4.9 from 673 customer reviews.
Appliance down in Temecula?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Do you cover Murrieta, Wildomar and Menifee, or only Temecula?
All of them, on the same run: we work out of the I-15 and I-215 corridor, so Murrieta, Wildomar and Menifee are scheduled against the same day as Temecula rather than as separate trips. Wine country properties along Rancho California Road and Butterfield Stage Road are further out and fit easier with more notice, particularly when the drive ends at a gate.