Built in fridge - water on shelves

[valve90210]

Hi All,

We have a built in fridge in the kitchen and for the first couple of months it's been fine but for the last week or so it gradually started getting lots of water sitting on top and bottom of the shelves and at the bottom. The sides and back still have little frozen drops on and it's still cold.

Any ideas what might be causing the water build up? My thought is a blocked vent or something, is that likely?

 

[valve90210]

Had a quick look last night and the drainage hole seems to be sort of finger sized and from what I could see doesn't have anything obvious blocking it, though I shall investigate more thoroughly incase there is something deeper down than I could see.

The thing that puzzles me is why there is so much water on the top and bottom of the top shelf. at the bottom I could understand if the drainage hole was blocked but why is there so much on the shelf at the top of the fridge? There is leterally a pool on top of the shelf and the bottom has great big drips all over it..

 

[valve90210]

is your fridge set to cold?
if the water on the back of the fridge never gets to melt and run down into the hole then your fridge is going to get wet and moist inside.

if you fridge doesn't have a proper temp gauge then you need a thermometer like one of those meat testing ones and a bottle of cold water.

leave the water in the fridge until it reachs the natural temperature of your fridge.

then test how cold the water is with the temp probe, you want it to be around 2-3c (anything below 4.4 but not to cold your fridge just freezes over and the back never gets hot enough to melt the moisture of the back and the condensation just keeps building up quicker than your fridge can get rid of it)

btw your fridge will work like this.

behind the backwall on the inside of your fridge will be the cooling coils which is how the backwall collects the moist air.
the cooling coils are wrapped by a heating element which is supposed to hear the backwall until it detects the temperature is 0c.
the frosty wall is supposed to melt and run down into a hole and out the back into a collecting plate above your compressor where it gets hot and evaporates when the fridge is doing a cooling cycling.

if it's to cold I think to much moisture setlles on the backplate and the heating element turns off before it's melted enough

Btw are you certain the fridge is roughly level? if it's tilted slightly forward maybe water is dropping off the ceiling and onto the shelf or the air isn't circulating very well.

infact some of the cheaper fridges don't have a circulation fan at the top whilst the more expensive models tend to.

maybe the ones without a fan are just not a very good design but if its level and not set to cold then you should be fine.

if you were to put mushrooms or something in the salad compartment would they start to frost over? if so your fridge is def to cold.

Hmmm I shall have a look at the temp, from memory it's set to something like 3 (and that is in arbitary units rather than anything specific...lol) We don't tend to have much in that fridge as we have both the built in one and a freestanding one.

As to whether it's level, well, that's anyones guess if it's anything like the rest of the kitchen then I doubt it's very level as it all seems to have been thrown together rather roughly!!!

 

[valve90210]

Well, last night I took everything (not a huge amount) out of the fridge and cleaned it all down and dried it off.

I was quite surprised to find that under the salad box at the bottom there was a pool of water, which I'm sure won't have been helping the situation, as I have read that uncovered liquids cause humidity which in turn causes more condensation and liquid.

I checked the drain hole, which on this model is a nice finger sized hole and it seemed clear as far as I could see and feel.

I'm hoping it's just a combination of being set a little too cold for the little amount of stuff that was in there and the liquid in the bottom which I think must have trickled down there at some point when something was pushed to the back and possibly blocking the drain hole.

Fingers crossed it'll be ok now.

 

[valve90210]

That's a good idea, I shall give that a go when I get home, totally didn't think of that last night when I looked, probably because it was way too late to be doing such things really!

 

[valve90210]

Having had the fridge switched off for ages now as we had numerous other projects on the go, finally took a few minutes to investigate (with a view to having the fridge useable at Christmas) and I think I might have found the cause of the problem I was having...

Upon a decent inspection I notived that the four fixings that should hold the fridge in place aren't actually screwed in place at all...

I pulled the fridge forward and lo-and-behold found that the fridge door which just sort of slammed closed previously could now actually close with that safisfying soft close and suction of a fridger door...

I figured that the problem must have been that the door wasn't closing properly, which would have course lead to lots of water and mould in the fridge.

I have now switched the fridge on and put in several 2l bottles of water and a few vegetables to see how the temperature goes and so far after a couple of days it's sticking in the 'safe zone' at about 4 - 5 degrees and there doesn't seem to be any build up of moisture.

Fingers crossed it was really that simple and we now have a properly function second fridge as that would amazingly handy for Christmas!!!