My refrigerator was in trouble. So, what to do?

My refrigerator was in trouble. So, what to do?

“shelter in place” + “avoid people coming into my house” = “DIY 
repair”

If it was in normal time, I would have bought a new one. My fridge is 21 years old. It had a major repair 10 years ago. Water supply to it was cut and capped two years ago - so, no chilled water, no ice at the door. Its freezer has suffered ice-dam a few times before, and a new ice sheet was building up at the bottom. Renzo offered to fix it, but the freezer was full of food at that time.

If I was to buy a new one, people need to deliver it, set it up in my kitchen and remove the existing one. I did not want to take that kind of risk just yet. So, as my freezer mostly emptied out I decided to tackle it.

Thanks to YouTube, figuring out the problem (frozen drain) wasn’t difficult. The toughest part was trying to get to the back of the fridge to clean and make sure the drain was clear. My fridge is surrounded by three walls, snug, and fronted by a large kitchen island. Even with my petite frame, it was tight. I felt like being that Asian acrobat guy in Ocean’s Eleven.

Well, anyway, it is fixed. Well, at least it seems working now. There is this hack I saw, placing a copper wire from the heating element to the drain hole in the freezer, which I wanted to try to prevent future freezing. I looked around my garage and there was no copper wire. And again, I did not want to risk going to HomeDepot just to get a few inches of wire. So, I removed the plastic covering from electrical wire, twisted it together, and used it.

Hope this works. Time will tell. Or someone with this kind of knowledge can tell me what I did was stupid and I should have used something else. But, sometimes, you just have to do with what you have at hand. Trying to learn a tiny bit from those NASA engineers in the Apollo 13 movie. 😁