Kitchen Large Electric Appliances - Kenmore bottom freezer groaning sounds

I have a fairly recent bottom freezer model Kenmore refrigerator (Model number 59662232200). Over the last year or so, I have been having to remove large volumes of ice from the bottom of the freezer compartment. It appears as if the (factory add-on) ice-maker is leaking, but this occurs even when I disconnect the water supply to the icemaker. Water routinely pools in the bottom compartment, freezes, and has to be removed about once every week or two. I use a teflon spatula to remove it.

In addition, the freezer compartment is now making a groaning or creaking sound any time the door is closed. At first I thought it was the freezer compartment gasket, but the sound continues when the door switch is manually actuated with the door open, and continues whether the fan and compressor are running or not. The sound has gotten much worse lately and is very annoying.

I don't know if the two problems are related or not. I have not called in a technician to look at this yet, first I would like to get some opinions from members of this forum.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your help.

brianh76

It sounds like the drain tube is stopped up. That is the tube that is used when the refrigerator goes into the defrost cycle, and melts any frost or ice from the coils in the freezer section. Not sure what the sound is.

H.

We can go into great detail here to help you, if need be.

Just the other day I had to put in a new defrost thermostat (not timer) in a bottom freezer fridge (knew defrost was not working from my Kill-A-Watt meter reading) and the coils were frozen like one huge block of ice, and blocked off the drain pan and tube, like you have going on. After I fixed it, I got 577watts on my Kill-A-Watt meter when I manually put it in defrost, and about 160 in the compressor run cycle.

Have you put a thermometer in your freezer, and then in your fridge section, to see what the temps actually are? People often do not know their temps are way off, because things are still froze and feel cool.

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Word of caution when relying on Kill-A-Watt meter: You must first run the fridge compressor for about 15 minutes, so the coils are in fact cold at the time you take the reading!, Otherwise you could be fooled into thinking the stat or element is not working, when it really MIGHT be. The reason is the element will not come on if the stat strapped to the element is not cold enough! And it is no longer cold enough between cooling cycles. The cooling coil warms back up when the freon stops circulating.

Thank you ecman51' and himeros for your posts, they helped me to solve my problem.

As you both stated, my problem was frozen coils and a blocked drain line. Once I read your posts, I took a look and it was plain to see. I would guess that my coils had been frozen for several months. When I checked, water had already begun to pool again, even though I had removed all the ice the previous day.

I did not want to disassemble anything, and I could not unplug my refrigerator for 24-36 hours, so I took another course of action. I unplugged the refrigerator, removed the freezer baskets, got my wife's hair dryer and used it to pass hot air over the freezer coils. As I did this, the ice block started to melt and I had to stop and mop up the water in the bottom of the freezer compartment several times. Within an hour or so, I had melted the ice block and was able to observe water flowing down the drain. I added 1/4 cup of hot water for good measure, just to be sure the drain was open. Once I plugged in the refrigerator and put everything back in place, I noticed that the groaning sounds I was hearing had stopped.

I checked this morning and everything looks great.

Thanks again for your assistance.

brianh76

Hi Brian. If the coils were frozen, especially up the coils pretty high, you may still have a problem, and it may surface again in a couple days.

IF all your problem was a backed up drain, then you'd think that any ice would be confined to the pan area, under the coils, and the coils would be free of ice, and any defrost water from above would cascade over that ice, go outside the pan and fill the inside bottom of the freezer.

But if the coils were frozen way up there, you may have a defrost timer, element or defrost thermostat (like I did) go out.

Post back if this turns out to be the case, and you need any help with this.

Thanks again ecman, I will keep an eye on it and post back if I continue to have problems.