Fixing Samsung Fridge Ice Buildup and Leaking Water under Crisper Tray 

The clip to install that came out after this video. Will prevent ice buildup in the drain opening amzn.to/3q8dCgw

I just did exactly as directed in the video. Exactly. There was very little ice buildup in the small tray. I went ahead and used the hair dryer technique. After about 1/2 hour, I poured a small amount of hot water in the tray and it did not drain. I watched part of another video that talked about the drain tubes in the back and bottom of the refrigerator. When I pulled one of the tubes out, water came gushing out! The drain tube was clogged. I cleaned it, tested it with tap water, put it back, and then poured water in the small tray below the coils where the drain hole is located. All the water drained through the hole! You might want to try that first before going through the process of removing shelves etc. I am just happy to get it back together again. Plus the refrigerator is clean!!! Bonus!

6 years later and your video is still important! Thank you, I'm fixing mine as we speak!

This is a permanent solution to the ice build up, so sit tight and enjoy the analysis. The root cause of the problem is ice built up and then clogged up the cold air vent holes and jammed the fan by ice. There are multiple reasons for ice build up: 1. Where did the ice come from? To minimize the ice we need to keep moisture inside to the minimum, which means covering up glasses of water, milk, opened sod cans, soup, cut open water melon, mango, fruits, wet vegetable, raw meat, etc. . The humidity inside the refrigerator is quite low, and so anythings that can be dried up will release moiture and this will form ice, and too much ice will out win the defrost heater short heating cycle (Samsung designed short defrost cycle to achieve the Energy Star) and the net result is a slowly ice build up if too much moisture inside. 2. The other moisture source is the bottom Pantry tray that collected water. You need to pull out the pantry and clean this bottom tray every month or so, or after a spill from trays above. Any liquid spill not cleaned up will ended up as ice inside the fan box -- no magic about this. 3. The bottom drainage hole is clogged up with ice. Once this happened, every degrost cycle will release the water down into the bottom Pantry and pool there. This water then evaporate and form ice inside the fan box eventually. (Hint: to melt the drain hole ice fast, fill up the "pond" above the clogged drain hole with water then place a 15 watts soldering iron hot tip into the water and make sure to keep the hot tip from directly touching the plastic part that can be melted. Add more water if the "pond" is dried up and expose the hot iron tip. The hot water will melt the ice and clear up the drain hole. This method is faster than hair dryer or adding hot water spoon by spoon. You need to keep an eye on this and remove the iron as soon as the hole is cleared. 4. Due to Energy Star regulation, Samsung and others have tried to design their products with low electrical consumption, which means they run the defrost heating cycle in much shorter time. If there is not much ice built up then the short defrost cycle is enough to melt all ice, but if the ice is too much then it ended up winning the battle and jammed up the fan or clogged up the cooling vent holes and the unit cannot get cold. So how do we solve these problems? It is unrealistic to have zero moisture inside the refrigerator, but if we can keep it to the minimum as I pointed out in (1) and (2) above, and with a modification to the design that prevents the drain hole clogged up then the problem will be eliminated permanently. To solve the problem (3), I used a 6 inches long, 3mm diameter copper (or aluminum) wire, wrapped around the black heater pipe (just above the drain hole and running across left to right) 3 turns, and extended the wire down into the drain hole. If you don't have large gauge wire then just use two smaller gauge wires, wrap them on the left and right side of the heater pipe and extend the wires down into the drain hole about 1.5 to 2 inches. This should carry the heat from the back heat pipe down deep into the drain hole and helps to prevent ice building up inside the hole. I used to fix the ice build up issue every year, but after implementing the 3 steps above, it has been running over 2 years and still no problem. My unit is RF266AB. Brian

Perfect instructions. Not drawn out like last one I used. Not my first time to take apart my evil Samsung fridge ... and I'm a 72 year old woman 😊 Thanks so much!

I put a copper wire through the drain..hooked it to the heating element and NO MORE problems! I pushed almost 2 feet into the drain hole. I don't know if that much was necessary but it worked! And that's after I paid 2 repairmen to come out who did nothing other than to thaw the ice out with MY blow dryer. Thank you all you guys on RU-vid who told me how to do it! PS I'm a woman...nothing stops me!

Huge thank you, Coderman. Your video saved this single mom a service call and bonus was that my teenage daughter was impressed with her mom because we have been dealing with water in the fridge for over a year. The video was very well done.

Our fridge has been leaking since the first day we plugged it in. It’s two years old and still leaking. THANK YOU for this video!

This is one option, but there is an easier way. I just had ice build up in my Samsung and began the process of taking the panel off, then discovered that the fridge has a power defrost setting. Hold the power freeze and fridge buttons for 8 seconds, use the fridge button to navigate to power defrost - on mine it’s denoted as rd (for refrigerator defrost, I believe). This will turn the cooling off and heat the coils for 20 minutes before going back to normal. It will beep while it’s in this mode, so don’t worry about that. I did this last night and this morning the fridge is quiet as a kitten.

This solution fixed my Samsung as well. All I can say, besides thank you, is that the drain line took nearly four hours to thaw out. For anyone else attempting this repair, just be aware it can take a really long time to get all of the ice melted in the drain.

Coderman, we thank you. We woke up to this and the husband is fixing it using your video. Otherwise we would have had to call a serviceman to help. We purchased all Samsung appliances 12 years ago. After one year the door on the dryer broke and we were told we were to rough on it. We are in our 60's and not rough on anything. Then we had to have a sercieman come in and fix it three times. He told us, "Don't ever buy Sansung. I have had more calls on these." Next, the dishwasher broke after 4 years. We are two people and used it maybe three times a week. Next, when I have the burners on low, the food boils over. Next, the ice make randomly spits out out out of the blue. We did have a leak in the fridge one year ago when we got home after a trip at 1:00 in the mroning. Hardwoods ruined. $6,500.00 to replace them. Oh, the washer has not given us any trouble yet though. Samsung sucks.

Just wanted to thank you for doing this video. We emptied it and had it open for over 24 hours thinking it was enough time to defrost the ice build up. When we plugged it in we got the 22E code and found very little on the internet about the code. After I removed the back panel we found a large chunk of ice exactly where the fan is located. We removed the ice and used an blow dryer to dry everything out. We put it all back together and after removing the 'demo' mode all is well. Thanks again!!

My family and I would like to say thank you. Our fridge had this problem but we had no idea how to fix this. Finding this video was a real life saver! The fridge works now but I'm pretty sure we won't be buying another Samsung to replace it in the future.

Thank you, thank you and thank you! Exactly what was wrong with our frig, it took us about 45 minutes total and saved a lot of money. My frig was so bad that it had 1/2 " ice under the cool select pantry drawer, it never leaked water because it was freezing. We would never have figured it out on our own.

I'm a 72 year old woman on SS and am so thankful for this video. Could not figure out how to remove the bottom shelf until I saw your video..Works on double door Samsung 13 months old. Just out of warren-tee. I the had an Ice build up .Even the fan had chunks of ice on it. My 82 year old husband was able to melt it with a hair drier. Thank you Thank you. You are wonderful. Samsung products have gone down hill.

I have the same issue. First time was about 6 months ago, I called a repair guy and $130 later he had defrosted the line and put it back together. It has happened again, I figured I could do it myself and save some money. Great video and very helpful, I'm going to try the copper wire off of the return to add a little heat to the drain. I also heard that fridge leveling could play a part .... the front wheels should not touch the ground, if they do; that slight slope forward may be contributing to slow draining and therefore freezing. I'm going to try that too. Just sharing!

This was the fix we were looking for. Had we simply defrosted the problem would have reoccured. Both drain valves on the back had gunk in them and the one was filled with stuff almost like grape skins. When I removed the really plugged one over 20 oz of water shot out of that line. We saved ourselves a service call because of this video.

Followed this to a T! And our refrigerator is working great. We waited a week to see the results and it’s great! This man just saved us 200 bucks in repair, if not more. Took hours, between taking everything out, drying the fridge, etc...But now we know. Thanks Coderman!

Thank you so much. Finally searched for this after our floors started being ruined from water. Perfect explanation and greatly appreciated

I appreciate you posting this video. My husband and I are not handy people but you made it look so easy that we are going to try to address this issue without calling a service repairman. Thank you!

Just followed your instructions and got the drain line cleared. It happened before and I watched the repairman fix it. He did one additional thing. Took a plastic tube and blew his warm breath thru it and down the drain. I used my mini vacuum hose attachment in the same way and defrosted things quickly. Thanks for an excellent video.

Thank you CoderMan!! After finding water and 1/4 sheet of ice under my crisper drawer this morning, I cleaned it and began searching the web for what was wrong. Luckily, I found this video which made it easy to follow and very specific enough for even me to disassemble and defrost my frig. My drain did not have as much ice on it as shown here but I melted what I found and put it all back together. I did spray some clorox spray down the drain line after talking to my repair man. So thank you for this video and I will NEVER buy another Samsung product. This is ridiculous and should have never happened!!

Thank you so much for posting this! You saved me from what could have been a very costly repair call. I had a lot of ice buildup (the fan was completely encased in ice) behind the cover and the small ice machine. Also very much appreciate the note about keeping the foam backing with the cover removal - it helped me make sure to pull the foam forward from back of fridge. It took a little TLC wiggling it out but in the end was simple. We just plugged everything back in and so far so good!

Thanks for this video, it helped us get the fridge back to running normally. We had so much ice build up that we couldn't close the bottom tray all the way. It leaked on our floor so badly that we developed water damage on our hardwood floors. It took several hours for us to get all of the ice out, but the fridge is working better than ever now. Saved us hundreds of dollars! Thanks again

OMg!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! This started when we first bought the fridge, and Samsung came out and fixed it for free bc it was under warrantee. We thought it was fixed. It’s 3 years later and it’s a problem again. It’s been driving me nuts and I’ve been taking ice and water out of the bottom of the drawers for the past 3 months! Since COVID, we don’t want anyone in the house. You’re very kind to do this. Great vid, easy explanation, and right to the point! Thanks, again!

After watching this video and performed your repair 7 months ago I have not had to defrost at all, prior to that it was a monthly battle. Thank-you very much.

Very helpful video. I highly recommend also cleaning out the drain tubes in the back side of the refrigerator at the same time. Easy to do, so don't skip it. Start by removing the cover on the bottom back of the fridge. Gently pull out the drain tubes (mine has 3) and clean them out. Backed up water poured out of mine when I pulled them out. The water was blocked by gunk that was trapped in the funnels on the drain tubes. I enlarged the bottom openings of the funnels to avoid gunk build up in the future. The Samsung replacement kit for these tubes has larger funnel openings, but no need to buy. Enlarging the funnel openings just requires a razor blade. Replace the tubes and cover and you are done. Two months and the flooding/freezing hasn't occurred again. Good luck!

A quick is solution that worked for me was I unplugged rolled it out in my yard ..poured 5 gal of gas on it and watched it burn ..then bought a GE ...and watch 2500 bucks burn on a 1.5 year old fridge

Thanks so much! had been pulling out my hair, with this problem! Endless mopping up, soggy soggy towels etc! Love this fridge, but this design flaw is a royal pain in the arse! Very grateful!

Very useful video. The refrigerator has worked well for the past 12 years and we were about to give up and buy a new one. With this problem solved, we may get a few more years of life out of this. This became a good project for us to tackle on a cold Saturday afternoon. Thanks very much!

Thank you, I followed your video exactly and fixed my Samsung, including the comments about clearing the funnels in the drain tubes in the back. My husband is impressed and my refrigerator fixed!

Thank you for taking the time to do this video! One tip for everyone when taking off the panel....I had significant ice buildup and had difficulty prying off the panel as I think a portion of it was attached to the ice. It wouldn’t budge at first so I walked away from it for a bit. When I came back and tried again there was a little more give so I thought to put the hair dryer to it around the edges and try prying again and it came right off. Do be careful with the styrofoam as I broke a small piece off from the bottom corner.

Thanks for the video - superb instructions! I actually let my fridge completely thaw out for about 8 hours, and when I put it all back together the problem re-appeared in a few days. Of course, once I found where the freeze was actually occurring and how well insulated the area is, it makes sense. I think it took about 2-2.5 hours with a hair dryer to completely thaw my drain tube!! I have tried the copper wire fix as mentioned by several others...so far it has been 6 weeks and no recurrence - I am hopeful that will fix it long term for me. Again, thank you for the video - I appreciate the time it takes to put something like this together!

We got the same exact fridge. I’m going to do work on it this weekend. I always knew it had something to do with the drain hole but I didn’t wanna pay for expensive repair and didn’t wanna mess/break the fridge. Thank you for creating this video. A very big solution for my family. And my food.

I can’t begin to thank you enough for this video. We fell for the fancy Samsung smart fridge with the touch screen which is only 3 years old this same exact problem happened and technician wanted $300 just to walk in the door not including parts and service. I followed this video step by step and fridge is working now so thanks for saving me $300.

Very helpful, well done video. Just finished doing this repair. Just a note: after using hair dryer for 30-40 minutes, the ice melted off the coils, but the drain was still clogged. Poured small amounts of almost boiling water down drain hole and after about 10 times, the little chunk of ice fell out into the evaporation tray. If you don't make sure the drain is open all the way to the evaporation tray, you'll probably end up doing this every week or so. Thanks again for posting this very helpful video....

Thank you so much for this video! We got pretty nervous when we found a 1/2 inch thick sheet of ice under the bottom drawer. This was absolutely perfect, and exactly the problem we were having! The details were right on point!

Great video. Followed the instructions and let it completely thaw overnight. Then put everything back together. It is working now and making ice. One word of caution: even using the hair dryer, it took several hours for the ice in the panel to thaw enough for extraction. Be patient when pulling off the panel, or you will have separate pieces of plastic and styrofoam!

Thanks for the video. Same problem here, ice was built up in the aluminum drain tray, but in my case that was only a SYMPTOM of the problem. The actual problem was a clogged rubber nipple in the bottom section of drain tube behind the refrigerator (near the compressor). Clogged up with some brown scaly crud which caused water to back up all the way up the drain tube where it overflowed back into the refrigerator regardless of whether it was froze up or not. I sliced off a bit of the end of the rubber nipple to expand the opening. Hopefully it won’t clog up again….

Prior to this, I never felt confident fixing much of anything. I felt like Tim the tool man Taylor (if you know you know) but thanks to your step by step guide, simple instructions, I feel more like Al. Many thanks, I will be passing this along to other Samsung fridge owners.

Wow!!!! You rock! We've tried to solve our leak problem for 2+ years!!! Couldn't have solved it without this video!! Easy to follow and problem fixed!! We thank u!

Thanks for the video! Samsung repair quoted me almost $600 to fix this but I thawed my drain today and got the water moving again. I didn’t really have any issues except for ice covering the top screw and probably holding the screw in place as it was in pretty tightly. My hair dryer made quick work of both of those issues. The only other thing was melting the ice in the drain. The tray melted easily enough but I couldn’t see down the drain to see what was going on, but I knew it had to be solid ice. Here, I used a turkey baster with hot tap water. I squirted it directly at the drain hole and then sucked it right back up since the ice probably cooled it down and I didn’t want to refill the tray with water. It only took a couple minutes to hear ice and water fall down the drain tube. I fastened a copper wire to the heating element and ran it an inch or two down the drain. The only thing I did that I didn’t see mentioned was to extend the legs on the front bottom of the refrigerator to tip it backward a bit, directing any dripping water toward the back of the unit instead of straight down (it was sitting level before). Other than the 3-4 hours when I had the unit unplugged with the French doors open to start the thawing, it took me less than 90 minutes to make sure the bottom drain wasn’t clogged and do everything else. I consider myself a pretty handy 57-y/o woman, but it really wasn’t difficult at all.

Big, grateful, DIY, Samsung-hating THANK YOU’s to CoderMan for this awesome fix!! Ditto to Brian Dang and Michael McClean for their add-on comments. Our bottom freezer was cold, and the top fridge was almost 60 degrees. After performing CoderMan's great instructions and hours of thawing, water was still pooling at the evaporator drain hole directly below the coils, so I figured there had to be another clog down the line. Took off the bottom rear panel. (SO easy, 4 screws...even tho' its says only an authorized technician should do it) Then looked for the drain hoses into the condenser pan. The second I took of the soft, flimsy restrictor valve from one of the two the drain hoses, water gushed out. That restrictor was clogged with black gunk, which I cleaned out. Before putting back on (to make sure the clogged was the culprit, I poured a little water into the evaporator drain hole and it ran all the way through into the condenser pan! Voila! No clogs! Everything is thawed, free-flowing and cold…at least for now, haha! It IS still Samsung, right?? But we’ve dodged an expensive service call today. For what it’s worth, Hubs & I are of a “certain age” and this was so doable. If our problem returns, I’ll post an update. CoderMan, blessings to you and yours for this video!

This is completely awesome!!! Just finished doing this today and now I can cancel my service call. Thanks for the video!!!

Your one off video to help others has officially helped me! Saved me $200 Thank you for posting!!

Thanks for your video! You confirmed my diagnosis! I just removed about a gallon of ice below the deli tray. This has happened once before in 13 years with this fridge. Symptom: water on the FLOOR this time. We've had an unusually wet and relatively humid spring that added to the condensation. and well, it needed a good clean anyway. I'll order the drain line clip (a metal one) mentioned in your pinned note the next time I pick up something from amazon. Makes total sense that it will act as a heat sink and prevent the initial clog. But we'll see what actually happens. Thanks again

One addition; there is a chance that the wire where the metal extends into the drain is still hot after turning the power off. Don't do what I did and burn yourself. Other than that, you might put a space heater in there along with the hair dryer to speed up melting the ice dam. It can take a while. Great video and thanks for posting.

Everyone is bashing Samsung, but this is exactly the same problem with my whirlpool gold side by side. Thank for the video, knew it wasn't the freezer drain and no one had a video about water in the bottom of the fridge. Glad I found this.

Thank you a million bizillion! I really appreciate the time you took to make this video. 😁. I don’t think I could have fixed my refrigerator without it!

Thank you for this. I came home from vacation and could not pull out the crisper drawer. When I did it had ICE underneath it with a ton of water....you saved the day.

I’m so grateful for this video! And all of your comments! I just had a repair service out here and they don’t even make the parts anymore to fix the drain issue! And if they did have the parts it was gonna be $700 to fix it I’ve already spent about 1000 and repairs so far

Great video. Very helpful. My biggest challenge was getting the styrofoam out as it separated from the plastic cover and was frozen in place. I spent a lot of time heating with a hair dryer before it would come out. Overall a successful project. Thanks!

Thank you so much for posting, I've had my fridge for 4 years and this is now just happening. I had a hell of a time getting the styrofoam back panel removed. For anyone attempting this, be patient once the ice thaws it will be much easier...slow and steady.

I tried all the solutions above and I finally nailed it: let's do a little physics. the fan purpose is to extract away the water which condense on the coil system and thus forming the ice "block". All solutions for tapping and all that are BS, because it won't block humidity to "spread" everywhere. All solution tilting the fridge, it's not gone help either because the ice is building up on top , and then humidity concetration increases and froze to hole where the melted ice -turned water is supposed to go. After trying all the solutions, I end with these 2 things: the top copper pipe is where the ice start to form, so I insulated it with the foam you are supposed to use for windows or gap , the can you can buy at Homedepot for $3. do not put too much, just enough to cover the copper entirely , like a 1/4 maybe 1/3 inch thick. let it dry and get solid and cut the extra to be sure you can re-install the back panel. Then I worked on that back panel, I removed part of the styrofoam which was shaping the "path" where the fan is blowing air away, allowing more air to be "kick out" from the back panel, bringing water humidity with it. I did that solution last July, and since that, NOT A SINGLE defrost to do..before it was getting crazier, like every 10 days! hope he can help others!

Best Refrigerator fix video. To the point. Straight forward and easy. This is how all fix it videos should be!

Thanks for the video! It helped me diagnose the problem. I had an additional problem because I found that even after defrosting, water wasn't draining into the drain pan very well. Turns out the tube that runs to the drain pan had a bit of a clog in it. Theres a "valve" where the tube connects to the fridge, and that valve had gotten filled with dust over the years. Once i cleaned that out the water flowed much more easily. I'm sure if I hadn't found that then it just would have frozen up again in a few months.

This video was EXACTLY what I was looking for! Perfect! Never buying a Samsung again, but THANK YOU!!

I can not thank you enough for this video. Simple with great detail and to the point. You saved me big time!

I love watching a video on here and knowing immediately that it’s the right one. Outstanding job man. I’ll tackle this one over the weekend. 👊🏻

This video is really clear; nicely done. The problem with all these instructions (I've watched 5 versions) is they assume you've either a) completely defrosted the fridge or b) you can spend all day waiting for the ice on the element to melt. I got about 30% of the panel separated from the wall with a hair dryer, but there's Styrofoam around the edge preventing me from getting any hot air into the frozen space. After two hours I decided we'll just have to live with periodically hacking the ice out from under the meat tray until we can spend a couple days without cold food.

To God be all the glory! Thank you for being thorough and straight to the point. It’s truly appreciated. Much love ❤️ and blessings to you and yours 🙏❤️💙

Great video. Well Explained. To fix the problem for good you can run a metal strip that wraps around the heating element down the drain. In some cases you may have to renove the factory strip used in order to add a longer thicker strip down the drain 👍

This video was exactly what I needed to fix our fridge. Saved me a lot of time, frustration and money. Thank you very much for posting it.

Lol either my phone heard me or this was a coincidence. My Samsung literally is having this issue right now and this just popped out when I went to you tube 🤣 Definitely will be doing this now. Thank you

Great help! This video made it easy to get into the area of the drain without breaking anything. After melting a large chunk of ice in the drain and water dam, the water still didn’t flow. I found another video about cleaning the drain tube under the lower rear service panel. It was clogged. When I removed it for cleaning, the water gushed out. I needed to do both, but the lower rear drain tube was the root of the problem. It now seems wise to check it and clean it periodically to avoid further problems.

Your Video is Great! Our problem is we purchased Samsung (French door style) during 2012, having ice buildup problems during warranty coverage with 3 additional times after warranty. Lucky us. Our Samsung currently has ice up “Again” + was informed by a salesman at local store: “Samsung incorrectly manufactured (approx 2011)the ‘part, where a coil is not long enough in the refrigerator to correct this problem”. Salesman did state: “Samsung has since corrected”. (Wish I could remember the exact name of the part) Well a little ‘too late for us + many others’. WE are now researching the purchase of our next refrigerator and one thing is apparent: All refrigerators with ice makers/water dispensers run into ‘some problems’. Researching taught us when ice maker comes through the refrigeration portion of our refrigerators: there will always be concerns/repairs as the unit comes through “The Warmer portion of the refrigerator”. Humm, makes sense. Hope this offers food for thought when we are searching for a reliable refrigerator. They don’t make em like they did in the 60’s-80’s. OH Well. BUT Thank you for your Video of fixing Ice Buildup: we will definitely try it with our next refrigerator. (As sooner or later there will be ice problems) 😃. karen

I would recommend adding a length of copper wire wrapped around the heating element and then down the drain hole. This ensures heat traveling down all they way removing any ice build up. The current metal piece that is there is simply not long enough.

You just made me look like a miracle worker to my wife. Thank you for taking the time to create this video. It helped a lot!

The root cause for me seems to be the two “drainage tubes” behind the refrigerator at the bottom. These funnel the condensation out. There are two one way valves that over time dry out and close preventing any fluid from properly draining eventually blocking up and freezing inside. Each drain tube is like $20 online. Replacement takes 5 minutes. Defrost like the video and go and replace these two tubes.

You are amazing! Water has spilling out of the fridge for weeks now and I've been dreading researching why fearing I had to buy a new fridge. Going to fix it right now, thanks!!

This is one of the best repair videos on RU-vid. Thanks!

Nice job on your video. I had horrific icing going on in mine and I moved the location of the temperature sensor after doing some research. It is located near those cooling fins and the defrost element assembly. That helped, but icing up seems to be something we might have to live with if we have a Samsung fridge in this family of models with french doors.

thanks brother! very helpful. after almost 9 years our's just started doing this. I used a copper ground romex wire.

This was a great walk through! I really appreciated it, saved me so much hassle!

Mucho thanks. Fixed my elderly inlaws fridge during pandemic. They were afraid of letting repairmen in the house so I quarantined and made the repair. :) I used the copper wire method described below.

I watch this video every time I have to spend 4 hours defrosting the drain tube line on my Samsung piece of crap. Very good video and detail to follow. I have found that using my compressor and air line cut down the repair time. I use the compressor to remove all water from the drain tube....by just pushing air into tube then pouring boiling water down the tube and repeating this process 10 times or so until tube clears and water flows down tube.

Simple , effective, inexpensive permanent fix. Wrap a thick copper wire around the heating element and run a single strand down the drain. Copper wire conducts the heat during the defrost cycle and will keep ice from forming to plug the drain. Length of the wire to use depends on your model. Use common sense. Go to big box store and get a foot of wire in the electrical dept...buy it by the foot. Just strip off the vinyl coating. Did this fix about 7 years ago and it's taken care of the problem.

In lockdown and my Samsung wasn’t cooling in the fridge section. This was my issue and complete resolution. Great step by step guide made it really easy. Thanks for this

Excellent! Combined the posts from Coderman and Brian Dang. Just got it back together and running. We'll see if there are any other issues as a result of the significant ice buildup. I would just add that this is a good opportunity to open the lower back panel to check the drain hose and vacuum the coils.

Just did this repair on my Samsung unit. Mine is just a little different it doesn't have a water dispenser. I have no water line connected to mine and I still managed to get this problem. There was a half an inch thick layer of ice under my pantry door that was stopping it from opening. I had no idea this problems were related. I noticed the hole where the drain is still had water accumulated after blow drying for about 20 minutes. I had to remove the thick layer of ice to finally solve this problem. Thanks a million.

Appreciate your video. Hopefully it will save a lot of people the expense and frustration of hiring a repairman. A brick to Samsung for not addressing this problem years ago.

WONDERFUL video - You really helped my daughter, who 2 years ago bought a Samsung "french door" fridge, has otherwise done NOTHING wrong to it, yet is now genuinely struggling with this insanely-frustrating phenomenon... What you DIDN'T explain is this: WHY is this even HAPPENING? and HOW can she PREVENT this from occurring ever again ?

This was so helpful! We had tons of ice back there and a thick sheet of it under the middle drawer (different model than the one in this video). I did the thing with the copper wire, so hopefully that does the trick... because I also broke one of the plastic bits that the screw goes into and it’s not gonna come back out without a lot of force 😬

We had to do this fix also but we took a heavy paper clip and straightened it out and wrapped it around the defrost coil and put the long part of the clip down into the drain hole and that keeps that hole from icing up. We did this approx 3 years ago and have not had another issue with the drain. We saw this fix on youtube...

Great video. I will totally empty and leave open 24 hours before trying this rather difficult fix. Good to know that others had this problem.

Thank you - this video gave me a nice overview on what I needed to do with my Samsung French Door fridge. Instead of hair dryer, I used a squirt bottle to pour hot water from the tap and that made quick work of the ice. I think the trick is to flush hot water down that little drain hole until it’s unclogged entirely- you will hear water rushing down to the drain pan. Just be super careful while removing that panel - mine was frozen shut at the bottom, and I can’t remove it until the hot water melted the ice at the bottom. Thank you and good luck everyone!

FYI: My older model (9 yrs) of Samsung does the same thing to include the freezer drawer and both crisper drawers. This fix only lasted for about two months and the issue returned (water in the drawers and water on the floor). It goes without saying, Samsung should stick to electronics not refrigerators.

Coder Man I followed your advice and it worked well. You did miss a very important step though. I pulled off the lower access panel behind the fridge and there are 3 drain tubes one was really plugged up. The other 2 were dirty. The one that was plugged is the one connected to the problem line.

Thanks for posting this video. I have the same problem with our Samsung refrigerator. Bought the $6 extended metal clip and still had the same issue. Cleaned out the drain tubes in the back even though there was no noticeable blockage or debris. Then, wrapped copper wire around and on the new metal clip and placed deep down the drain hole and still have water leaking under the crisper tray. I'm at a loss and ready to throw this POS. It's a pig with lipstick, looks great on the outside but the devil lives inside. So many silly issues with it but this one is the worst.

We are renters it will cost us 100.00 to call and have someone look at the fridge, the sad part we could not do this but this answers our problem why it's all frozen behind that area and we thank you for the lesson many blessings for you and love ones

Great instructions in the video. I got this all done including a wire down the drain hole without too much problem, but the problem came back within 2 weeks. Just got off chat with a Samsung rep, and he advised me to verify the level, and get back to them if it doesn't take care of it(!). Today is the last day of a sale at HD, think I'll go back to the good old top freezer.

Thanks, same fridge, same issue, we've had the fridge for several years and this just started, lots of ice build up

In addition, make sure to clean and drain water defrost line. It's most likely clogged and causes excess water/humidity buildup inside fridge. Easy access from back of the fridge, after sheet metal cover is removed. There are 2 or 3 drain tubes leading to drain pan; one or more of drain tubes is likely to be completely blocked with dirt and gunk. Good luck!

I did this today.i used a light copper wire attached twisted with grips to black element so the tray should never freeze. Was about 40 minutes to take all a part.took my time not to break anything. Also top of panel had some strong to way tape..hope this works.thanks

Thank you sir-exactly what we are experiencing. The support is much appreciated.

Great videos thank you. Panel was hard to get off, but if you pull the styrofoam with the plastic it lessens the chance of breaking the plastic. Worked like a dream. Took about 2 hours start to finish.

Thank you for this video and the comments it attracted. Our problem hasn't been fixed; I'd love to hear any suggestions. We unplugged the fridge for four days to let it defrost thoroughly--one day more than the repairman recommended. We plugged the fridge back in and enjoyed a great week of no water pooling under it and no ice building up at the bottom of the freezer. Last Saturday my wife and I unplugged the water hose for the ice maker, but the water hasn't slowed down a bit. I read the comments about limiting the sources of moisture in the fridge. Any other suggestions? I'm planning to try the paperclip down the drain hole too. Is that to facilitate melting the ice or to clear out a blockage? BtW, this is the last Samsung anything we ever buy.

So our fridge is a little over a year old. We had Samsung come out due to ice maker freezing up twice. That problem is fixed, they replaced the ice maker. Although it leaks a bit when you get water or ice. Then this problem with the evaporator being changed twice! As of now 5/2019 it still has a small leak. So I don't know if it could be a generic water filter problem or the same thing happening due to the draining. So buying a Samsung water filter. Then going to have the service guy from the warranty company come out again, and show him this video! I'm disgusted with this fridge already! Since it is past a year....don't know if they would give us a refund yet. Samsung should do a recall, or class action lawsuit filed! Thanks so much for your informative video! 👍🏼

Just a note, this happens with side by side Samsung too! Thank you!

Very well explained. The "press the two clips together" to remove the bin holder was different on mine and I needed flathead screwdrivers to push then in and a second person to lift up. Directions were great! Thank you