GTS22KBPARWW - GE Refrigerator - water pooling in fresh food compartment

[testguyct]

Hello all,

Within the last month, my GE GTS22KBPARWW top-freezer refrigerator started having water pooling in the fresh food compartment.  I am suspecting that the drain for the defrost is getting clogged ?  or frozen ?  Just wondering if anyone has encountered this type of problem, and how it was fixed ?

Thanks in advance.

[testguyct]

Well this was an easy one.  I removed the rear interior panel of the freezer section, exposed the coils and the drip tray.  Sure enough, the drip tray and drain tube were filled with ice. I used a hair dryer to thaw the drip tray, used a big towel to soak up the water, then used a turkey baster loaded with hot water to heat the drain tube.  I let the hot water sit for a minute, then soaked it up, and repeated the process until the drain opened up.  My guess is that the freezer door was not shut properly for a long period of time - possibly too much stuff in the freezer.  It's was easy to see how the water would overflow into the fridge section.  Just saved a bunch of dough on a service call - woohoo !

[AJ]

Glad to hear you got it fixed, thanks for the update!

[testguyct]

UPDATE:
Well, the water started leaking into the refrigerator fresh food compartment again.  This time I removed the access panel on the back of the refrigerator.  The defrost drain was full of water and unobstructed.  I think the root cause of the problem was that the evaporator fan housing was clogged with dust, preventing the airflow that would have been evaporating the defrost water.  I vacuumed the dust off the housing and absorbed the water that was in the evap tray under the fridge.  I have my fingers crossed that this has solved the problem.  I probably should have blown out as much of the water out of the defrost drain as I could before putting everything back together. Oh, I also took a piece of 12 ga. copper wire, shaped it into a hook, and let it rest directly on the defrost heating element, and put the other end of it into the defrost drain opening. This should help transfer heat to the drain opening to prevent freezing. I got this idea from another appliance repair forum.