Got issues with your Norcold refrigerator? You’re not alone!

(Norcold is a brand of refrigerator in many RVs. Feel free to skip this post and go to the next one if you don’t have an RV or aren’t interested in all the crap you have to fix if you own one.)

A portion of the glacier of ice that once occupied my freezer. It’s about two inches thick here, but started as three inches in the center. Yeah, yeah, so I let it go for a while – what of it?

My Norcold fridge doesn’t do well in high heat, the current temperature in south central Texas. I’m hoping you have better solutions than what I’ve tried. Besides, I’m losing interest in the Online Dating Chronicles. Not even the “30 Boyfriend Rules” profile written by two little girls got a response. Perhaps potential candidates suspected my snarkiness in posting it in place of my original profile.

Issue #1: The back of the freezer has accumulated a glacier’s worth of ice.

I suspect the extra weight negatively effects my gas mileage. Global warming is not effecting my RV fridge. If there is such a thing as Global Warming, the world is welcome to use my fridge to help combat it.

I tried to thaw it, only to have my hairdryer die after about two minutes. WTF??? The hairdryer still works, but seems to over heat and shut down when trying to thaw the fridge. It wasn’t making a dent in the glacier anyway.

Next, I chipped at the wall of ice with a knife for another thirty minutes, switching arms, back and forth, as each arm tired out. Thirty minutes and two aching arms later, I had made such little progress it was depressing.

Issue #2: The small drip tray in the top, back of the regular cold area of the fridge freezes over and won’t drain.

The only (temporary) solution I can engineer is to open the access panel on the outside of my RV, and hang the small drip hose outside. I clear the small weep valve at the end of the hose by sticking a thin piece of wire through it. Leaving the hose outside the vent seems to help the flow of water – once it manages to melt.

You might think from all this accumulation of ice that I keep my fridge on #5 (the coldest setting). I never turn it higher than #3. If I turn it higher, the cold stuff freezes, too, so at most I leave it on #3. On those frozen cold days, I turn it to #1. It seems to do a bit better in the cold weather.

Got any solutions for thawing the massive glacier? Preferably one(s) that don’t require turning off the freezer for a few days and getting water all over the floor.

Got any solutions for the water at the top of the cold section that freezes rather than drains? If I turn the fridge lower, the ice melts, but the food warms. Not good.

What, if any, maintenance do you do on your Norcold fridge?

My freezer after the glacier! 🙂

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who offered solutions! I have the best readers! 🙂

I used the “pan of hot water and beach towels” idea mentioned below in comments. I also, due to a life-long lack of patience, chipped at the glacier with a butter knife and put hot water on the glacier with a sponge. The critical moment – where the largest chunk of the glacier came out all at once – was a complete surprise: I decided to try getting hot water behind the block by slopping the hot water at the top edge, and then try working at the glacier as a whole with the butter knife (rather than chipping off edges as I could). I worked the butter knife at the edge of the glacier to get leverage on the whole this – and BAMM! it popped off! I was surprised. The whole process took about and hour (boiled the pan of water only twice). I believe the slopping of hot water behind the glacier, and working at the edge with the butter knife really helped shorten the process.