The short answer
On the AUFSS roster ice on the compartment floor and water outside it are the same fault at two stages. The family covers a single listing, AUFSS210ETH-LK. Meltwater that cannot leave through the drain freezes where it stands first and overflows later.
What you observe
- Ice building on the floor of the compartment — Meltwater freezing where it should be draining. The earliest visible stage of a blocked drain path.
- Water appearing in front of the unit hours after a quiet period — Timing that tracks the defrost cycle rather than a continuous source.
- Heavy frost around the door opening and on the seal — Warm moist air entering continuously. The moisture has to go somewhere and it ends up as ice and then water.
- Sweating on the outside of the cabinet — A humidity story rather than a leak, but the water ends up in the same place so it gets reported the same way.
- A wet patch that never dries at all — Constant water on a freezer without a supply line points at the pan or at something above the unit rather than at the defrost cycle.
- NEAR MISS - an oily film rather than clear water — Oil in the machine compartment means the sealed system is open. Stop, do not run the unit, and call.
What it usually turns out to be
- Blocked or frozen defrost drain — First on this roster by a wide margin. Meltwater is meant to leave through a narrow drain to a pan; debris and a slow glaze of ice close that path and the water backs up into the compartment. The AUFSS roster covers a single listing, AUFSS210ETH-LK, and this holds across all of it.
- Drain pan cracked, displaced or overflowing — Ranked here because it explains floor water with a completely dry compartment, and because it is the classic finding after the unit has been moved. If your plate reads AUFSS210ETH-LK, or any other number in the table above, this is unchanged.
- Defrost heater or thermostat fault producing excess meltwater — Ranked below the blockage causes because it is less common, but it is what a drain that re-ices within weeks is usually reporting. For the AUFSS listings, every listing in the roster shares one number series, so the access notes below hold across the roster.
- Sealed-system fault — Included only to rule it out: an oily film rather than clear water means the system is open, and that is a stop-and-call finding.
- Body: The ranking here is shorter than the brand-generic one because most listings on this roster have no water supply at all. That removes the plumbing branch entirely and puts the defrost drain at the top with nothing competing for the position.
The order to work in
- Establish exactly where the water appears — Inside the compartment, in front of the unit, or behind it low down. Each points at a different part of the path.
- Dry everything and watch the timing for a day — Water hours after a quiet period tracks the defrost cycle; water that is always there does not.
- Look for ice on the compartment floor — Meltwater freezing where it stands is a blocked drain caught before it overflows.
- Body: The order below starts with where the water is, because on the AUFSS roster water inside the compartment and water on the floor behind the unit come from different places.
Before you open anything
Safety
Unplug the appliance or switch off its breaker before clearing a drain or removing any panel. A capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. Water on a floor beside a live appliance is a slip and a shock risk at once, so dry the floor before you start rather than after.
Models in the AUFSS family — This page generalizes over every listing in the roster below; where the models diverge for this fault the text says so, and where it does not, they behave alike.
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| AUFSS210ETH-LK | arctic-wind:freezer:aufss |
When to call a technician
Stop when the next step needs the compartment emptied or the panel removed. Call urgently if the cabinet is both leaking and warming, because a freezer defrosting itself makes a great deal of water and that is a cooling fault, not a drain fault.
Other pages for this family
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