The short answer
Water on the floor at an A Premium TAW cabinet is a plumbing question first and a refrigeration question second, and where the water sits tells you which. Every refrigerator makes water on purpose — defrost meltwater has to go somewhere, and there is a drain and a tray to take it. A leak is almost always that path blocked or a supply line that has let go, and the two look nothing alike once you know where to look. The table below lists three models for this family, and they are close enough that the fault behaves the same way across all of them; what differs between them is parts rather than diagnosis.
Where the water is telling you to look
- A pool under the crisper drawers inside the cabinet — Meltwater that never reached the drain and ran forward instead.
- Water on the floor at the front, appearing after the inside pool — The same fault, one stage later, once the cabinet floor has filled.
- Water at the back near the wall, sometimes with the machine idle — The supply line, the inlet valve or an overflowing tray, and none of those is a defrost problem.
- A sheet of ice under the freezer basket — The drain is frozen rather than merely blocked, so the water freezes where it stands.
- NEAR MISS — beads of water on the seals in hot, humid weather — Condensation on cold surfaces is normal in that weather and is not a leak at all.
Where the water is escaping, most likely first on the TAW line
- The defrost drain blocked or frozen closed — It is a narrow passage at the coldest point in the machine carrying water that arrives with debris in it, so it closes gradually and gives no warning until the cabinet floor fills. The three models of the TAW family share this construction, so what ranks first on one of them ranks first on all of them.
- The drain pan cracked or knocked out of position — The pan sits under the cabinet where it takes a knock on every move, and a cracked pan drips onto the part of the floor nobody can see.
- Door seals admitting warm, humid air — Warm air condensing on cold surfaces makes standing water with nothing broken, and a seal that has taken a set stops gripping at the corners first.
- The ice maker fill tube or mould overflowing — A fill that overshoots or a split, iced tube puts water onto the freezer floor instead of into the mould, and it only leaks when the cabinet calls for ice.
The order to work through on these models
- Find where the water stands inside and trace it back to the drain outlet — Water inside the cabinet nearly always means this, so the first look is also usually the last.
- Look underneath with a torch before moving the cabinet back — Done at the same time as the supply check, since both live in the same place.
- Close the door on a sheet of paper at several points and see whether it slips — Free and fast, and it explains water that only appears in warm weather.
Models in the TAW family
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| TAW35 | a-premium:refrigerator:taw |
| TAW45 | a-premium:refrigerator:taw |
| TAW55 | a-premium:refrigerator:taw |
Isolate it first
Safety
Isolate the cabinet at its breaker, or draw the plug, before any panel is disturbed — stored charge can remain in a capacitor once the supply is gone. Never chip at evaporator ice with a tool or warm it with a flame: the pipework beneath is thin enough to open under both. Treat the sealed circuit as out of bounds, since recovering refrigerant is licensed work. Clear the shelves before the cabinet is walked out, because a loaded unit carries its weight high and is heavier than it looks. The freezer door switch stays exactly as the factory wired it.
When to call a technician
Call a technician when the drain has been cleared and the water comes back, or the moment you find the leak is on the supply side rather than the defrost side. Call immediately if water is reaching an electrical outlet, a floor void or a room below, because the cost of a leak is almost never the appliance repair and is almost always what the water reached while nobody knew it was there.
Other problems covered for this family
Lead Appliance Repair Technician · 12 years experience
Experienced technician with 12 years specializing in washing machine and dryer repairs across all major brands.
