Evolve has posted many blogs about kitchen fails over the years poking fun at the Mechanical and Plumbing failures.  Now its time for us to let the public judge us for our work!

For months now our freezer in our condo would slowly drip water that would pool up in the refrigerator.  Finally my wife and I had enough and decided to attempt to fix ourselves without the professional help of a refrigeration technician.

Below is the step by step process I did to fix the issue…. full disclosure no YouTube videos were watched, only my own engineering judgement… so feel free to comment and judge away!

Above is a picture of the freezer with the back panel removed to expose the evaporator coil, fan, defrost heater and other refrigeration components.  The issue we are having is there is ice building up on the drain pan not allowing condensate water to drain.  The water then drips out into our fridge creating a mess!

I took hot water, blow dryer and a thin brass pipe to slowly melt the ice on the drip tray to exposed the drain.

I then stripped some copper wire from an old electrical charger.

Wrapped it around the defrost heater. FYI do NOT use Brass as its much too rigid to wrap around the defrost heater, instead use copper or aluminum which are both malleable and highly conductive to transfer heat.

I then pushed the copper wire into the drain hole.  The hope here is that when the defrost heater turns on it will conduct down the copper wire into the drain not allowing ice to freeze over.

So far its been months with no issues! Knock on wood!

Alright please feel free to comment about any concerns, questions, or down right insults are ok too lol (I deserve it).

James Hicks P.Eng.

Evolve Mechanical Solutions