Why is there water under my refrigerator?

Coastal humidity makes the drain the hard-working part in this climate. Every defrost cycle produces melt water that has to run down a small tube to a pan under the unit, and in humid air there is simply more of it to move. Add a drain tube that has partly iced, or a drain heater that has failed, and the water backs up into the bottom of the cabinet, freezes into the sheet people find under the bottom drawer, and then overflows the front lip. The fix is clearing the line and correcting whatever froze it. The delay is what costs money.

You can narrow it down yourself before we arrive. Water that appears on a schedule, roughly every few hours, is defrost related. Water that appears when the ice maker fills or when someone uses the dispenser is a supply-side fault. Clear water is supply. Slightly cloudy water, sometimes with a little debris in it, has been sitting in the cabinet. And if you can safely reach the shutoff behind or beneath the unit, closing it stops a supply-side leak immediately without harming the refrigeration at all.

Of everything on this list, water is the one to call about today rather than next week, particularly in a house that is not occupied continuously. Hardwood and stone floors near the coast are already carrying more ambient moisture, and water working under a built-in has nowhere to evaporate to. The repair itself is drain heaters, tubing, valves and fittings, all ordinary parts and usually one visit. The flooring underneath, once it has been wet for two weeks, is a different trade and a different bill entirely.

If that matches what your appliance is doing, say so when you call — it tells us which parts to bring, and most of these are finished in one visit.