Drawer Gasket Iced to the Frame

How ice forms at a drawer seal

A freezer drawer runs far colder than the kitchen. Where the gasket stops meeting the frame, room air slips in and its moisture freezes on the first cold surface it touches: the seal and the frame beside it. Every opening adds a little more, until the ice bridges the two and holds the drawer shut.

The thickest ice marks the leak. A band the full width of the drawer suggests it has been resting slightly open; a lump at one corner points to the gasket there.

Clearing the ice

For heavy icing, the Designer use and care guide has the owner switch the unit off, melt the ice with a hair dryer on its low setting, keep the dryer moving, and wipe the water away. It also warns against mechanical devices or other ways of hurrying a defrost that the maker does not recommend. That rules out knives, scrapers, heat guns and prying at the front.

What sits behind it

The guide’s frost-and-ice checklist runs: condenser clean, door or drawer closing properly, not left ajar, gasket free of rips and tears, with a torn gasket referred to service. On a drawer we rule out, in turn:

• a gasket torn, flattened or folded at a corner;
• a drawer stopping short against an overfilled basket, a package at the back, or dragging slides;
• a cabinet out of level, letting the drawer settle open;
• a drawer left ajar.

Once the gasket is dry, a paper strip closed in at intervals round the drawer shows where it fails to grip.