Refrigerator condensation outside freezer door archived

What condition are the gaskets in?

@beaker, doesn't neccessarily mean it's a goner, but the seals are probably in less-than-great shape. We inherited an ancient amana fridge when we bought this house and in really sticky weather we get enough condensation that I mop up little puddles under the bottom corner of the door.

But given the lifespan of new fridges (to say nothing of cost), DH and I have opted to just let this one keep chugging along. It may outlive me.

The gaskets are pliable & not cracked. Teensy gap from warping at top corner but doubt it's big enough to cause this much sweating. I think what happened is: person feeding our cats while we were away tried using the ice dispenser, but many cubes got trapped in chute, then enough melted water leaked into the door insulation to cause it to clump, slump, fail. We probably shouldn't have gotten the dispenser model (or GE) = nothing but trouble for years. A towel under freezer door for five months a year may not be endurable (and there's nice white oak flooring in the kitchen which doesn't respond well to wet towels, ugh). Wonder what the cost of a replacement door will be? (ha) Thanks for your replies.

How long has this been going?
Has this affected the food inside? soft ice cream?
I believe there's a way to adjust the door hinge to make a tighter seal.
We had condensation on our freezer door bc door didn't close tightly, due to a bit of overstocking.

I had this problem once in South Carolina with a chest freezer and was never able to stop it. Our appliance guy sold us a new one and took the old one away to use in his shop.

A week or so later he called me as he had the same problem. He took the unit apart and found that the insulation between the inner and outter walls had come loose. You could see where it was bonded with a glue or something to both the outter and inner walls, but the glue had just let go. The insulation was just flopping around inside.

So the cold was seeping to the outter metal skin of the unit. The warm moist air of the house met it and water condensated out of the air in the form of sweat.

That was my problem. Your could be that, or a seal leak, or some thing like that.

Any where, where cold air meet warm moist air you will see this develop.

Later,
Da
George

We have had a few days this summer where the humidity was high enough to sustain fish. If you have condensation on days like this, I wouldn't worry about it. If it is happening today, for example, then something is wrong.

On a related note, our 1 year old small fridge/freezer we bought for the garage which mostly olds drinks and company spillover is very noisy on occasion. Other times you only hear a purring sound. Sign of a problem?

Most refrigerators have a switch inside labeled something like power saver or similar. The reason is to turn on/off a low power heating strip where your condensation is occurring. You should make sure that it is engaged properly for the summer weather.

Take a dollar bill and close the door on it. If it pulls out easily,the gaskets are going.

We were away, but didn't take another look at this discussion until today (another high humidity day) Apollo T, the problem's limited to condensation on freezer door (exterior). MrMaplewood, nope - no power saver switch (already had looked into that, but I guess our model's too old) georgieboy, I tried a $1 (and a $10 bill for extra-tough testing) and both are snug. john, yeah it's probably the extra high humidity that makes the towels on the floor very wet, but something's not normal (for instance, for years there hasn't been much condensation on the freezer door. DaGeorge - spot on. I'm sure the insulation has failed, come unstuck, slumped, etc. I'm not going to try and take the door apart or I'll really mess up the seals and other stuff too, no doubt. Thanks all, for your ideas.