This week had me attempting to be the maintenance guy here in the good old New North End of Burlington, Vermont. Yeah, I can fix a lot of things in our house, true. Other times however, this mechanical crap throws me for a loop.
We’ve had this problem a few months back. I wake up early. I go to grab my bag of Dunkin Donuts French vanilla coffee bag from the fridge and find a big puddle of water on the floor near the freezer portion. I slap myself on the forehead and walk downstairs to grab another old towel from the rag bin. I fixed this last summer but it continues to rear its ugly head every few months.
Last time, as instructed by my retired refrigerator repairman neighbor, I pour some boiling water and a touch of bleach into the filter. Apparently, it gets clogged sometimes with ice and won’t let water go through the drain. That water melts and refreezes. Then it overflows, spilling water underneath the bin containing a large bag of frozen Buffalo wing chicken, four packs of bean burgers, and some Ben & Jerry’s back onto the floor in the kitchen. It just makes for a wonderful start to the day.
My lovely bride and I have never had good luck with appliances. In our previous house, we had a dishwasher that would sound like a jet engine mid cycle. If you were playing music or watching TV, you’d have to crank up the volume to hear it.
Our dryer, in addition to the flecks of paint coming off onto our clothes now, had knobs that stripped. For a while, we used a wrench to adjust the drying time. We since jerry-rigged it with a new knob but the line is in a different position now, so you have to finagle the knob and hope for the best.
Our fridge, in addition to the dripping freezer filter, makes loud clunking noises when it’s trying to make ice cubes. We joke that it sounds like someone is knocking at the front door. Maybe we just can’t have nice stuff, as my Mom used to say.
So, now let me return to the freezer filter issue. I tried the procedure again this time with no luck. As I have no earthy idea what to do, I head to my laptop and click onto youtube.com, searching for a video on how to remedy the situation. I found the same video I viewed six months ago.
Giving up, I phoned one of the local refrigerator repair shops for advice. Her advice was to “Unplug the fridge for an hour and a half. Keep the doors closed and that should melt the drain. Your food will be fine for ninety minutes.” I thanked her and said if it didn’t work, I’d call her back tomorrow and have them come out.
It’s frustrating. I’m a fairly intelligent old guy (cue laughter from my neighborhood male friends) so you’d think I can fix these problems. Not today.
If you have any advice for me (besides spending fifteen hundred dollars for a new fridge), let me know. Otherwise, I’ll be calling back the nice lady at the repair shop soon.
P. S. What I absolutely did NOT want to do, I did. I took the inside panel of the freezer section off and it was completely full of ice. I poured some hot water in it. I cleaned the ice out. Finally, using a turkey baster, I blasted more water into the drain. Ta-da…
It’s fixed… I hope…