Maytag water inside or under the refrigerator

Find out where the water is

Take the crisper drawers out and dry the base of the compartment completely. If water returns there over a day, it is coming from the drain and nowhere else. Look at the floor of the freezer compartment for a layer of ice — that ice is the water that should have gone down the tube. For water on the kitchen floor instead, pull the cabinet forward carefully and look at the pan underneath, and at the plastic water line running to the back if the refrigerator makes ice or dispenses water. A line pushed against a wall or cracked at a fitting is a common cause and it is not related to the drain at all.

What it usually means, by the kind of machine

One complaint, several machines. This maker still sells a top-load washer with an agitator alongside one without, a front-loader, and a stacked pair, and it sells the same oven as a range and as a wall unit in gas and in electric. The behavior you can describe is identical on all of them; the first hour of the repair is not. A front-load washer has a drain filter the owner can open and a top-loader has nothing to reach from the front, and that single difference decides how the same afternoon goes.

• Side by side — The drain runs down the back of the freezer half and the water it fails to carry shows up on the fresh food side. Frost at the base of the freezer compartment is the corroborating sign.
• French door bottom freezer — The classic version of this. The drain tube runs down behind the freezer drawer and ice forms at the very bottom of it, which is where the water starts backing up.
• Top freezer — Simplest layout and the same problem. The drain hole sits at the back floor of the freezer and can be seen once the shelf is out.

Humidity makes this worse here

Every time the door opens, warm damp air comes in and gives up its moisture on the coldest surface it can find. That is more water for the drain to handle than the same refrigerator would produce in a dry climate, and it is why blocked drains and hardened gaskets are two of the most common cold-side repairs in this region. A gasket that would last a decade elsewhere is worth checking here at seven or eight years.

Why the drain freezes

The tube is small, it runs through the coldest part of the cabinet, and the water going down it is barely above freezing. Once a little ice forms at the outlet the rest follows quickly. Clearing it is straightforward; the part of the job that takes the time is getting to it, which on a bottom-freezer cabinet means emptying the drawer and working at floor level.