Refrigerator Leaking Water

Checks you can do safely before you call

1. Stop the water first. Close the supply valve that feeds the refrigerator, which sits under the sink or on the wall behind the fridge. If it is a small saddle valve clamped onto a pipe, turn it gently, and if it won't close, shut the home's main water valve. Turn the ice maker off so it stops calling for water.
2. Unplug before you move it. When water is anywhere near the outlet or the cord, switch the circuit off at the breaker first and only then pull the plug. Dry the floor in front, then, with a helper, roll a freestanding model straight out slowly with the water line slack. Dry behind it so fresh drips are easy to spot, and leave a built-in in its opening.
3. Look at the drain pan. With the fridge unplugged, remove the front base panel near the floor and, where the pan shows behind it, check that it sits squarely under the drain tube and isn't cracked. Wear gloves, because the metal edges near the condenser can be sharp and the tubing near the compressor can be hot. A pan reached only through a screwed-on rear cover is for the technician.
4. Reseat the water filter. With the supply valve still closed and a towel under the housing, remove the filter, check its O-rings for nicks, and lock it back in until it clicks. Use a filter made for your model. Once the floor and the cord are dry, plug the refrigerator back in, restore the breaker if you switched it off, and open the supply valve again. Run a few glasses through the dispenser and watch the housing for drips.
5. Flush the defrost drain. Unplug the refrigerator, move the food to a cooler and look for a drain hole at the back of the freezer floor; on many frost-free models it sits behind a panel, and that one is for the technician. Squeeze warm, not boiling, water into an open drain with a turkey baster, a little at a time, and stop if it backs up, because the pan under the fridge holds only so much. Never push a wire or a sharp tool into the drain, because the cooling coil sits right above it.

When to call a technician

• Water keeps returning after you flushed the drain and reseated the filter.
• Ice forms again across the freezer floor within a few days.
• The leak comes from the inlet valve or a fitting at the back of the fridge.
• Water is reaching the outlet, the cord or the floor beneath your cabinets.
• The refrigerator is a built-in unit anchored in its cabinet opening.

What happens at the diagnostic visit

The technician traces the leak to its source: the defrost drain and the heater or metal strap that keeps it from freezing, the drain pan, the supply line and its fittings, the water inlet valve, the filter housing and the ice maker fill. Flow is checked where the water enters the refrigerator.

The diagnostic visit is $89 for a standard residential appliance and $129 for a built-in unit or commercial equipment; a premium brand on its own doesn't make an appliance built-in. The repair price comes first, and nothing is replaced without your say-so. See refrigerator repair for the fridges we fix, and ice maker repair when the water comes from the ice maker itself.

Brand and model notes

• Samsung: French-door Samsung refrigerators that make ice in the left-hand fresh-food door can collect ice inside that door compartment; as it melts, water runs onto the shelves or the floor. Our Samsung page covers more Samsung refrigerator faults.
• LG: many LG French-door models hold the water filter in the ceiling of the fresh-food section, at the upper left. A filter that isn't locked fully into place drips onto the top shelf. Read more on LG.
• Whirlpool, KitchenAid and Maytag: some side-by-side models take the water filter in the base panel at the bottom front, so a puddle at the front can be the filter rather than the drain pan. See the Maytag page, or Whirlpool and KitchenAid.