A friend got me round to sort out their badly smelling fridge, its a 5 years old siemens, and for the last week smells like someone died behind it whilst making cheese, x100 worse.

Pulled it out, and the condenser tray really was full of dodgy goo like wet cheese. Its the type that has a vertical piece of blotting paper to lift the water up past the fins on the back, but obviously something has gone wrong. Is it possible that the door has been ajar causing too much water to end up in the tray, thus allowing goo to grow? I cant see how that would work though, as plain water shouldnt end up that bad without something in it to rot.

Any ideas? Ta!

fridge on holiday had this.

The heat from the motor is supposed to evaporate the water drained from the fridge. once you get contamination ( mold ) it is only going to get worse and there are lots of nice things in a fridge to cause it . They took the plastic tray out cleaned and bleached it and clipped it all back together. The speed that this was done in - it looked to be just one of those maintenace jobs thet have to do in France with fridages that are off then on then filled with lots of beer !!.

If the seal is ok and everything else seems ok with the fridge I clean it ant see if it does it again.

Regards

Agriv8

Agreed. Many of the fridges I come across in pa's rented flats stink. A dose of bleach sorts them.
Must say the last REALLY cheesy one had been off and shut for a couple of months. That was carried outside and hosed out before I stuck my head too close

well thank you very much I just splattered my net-book screen reading your title too fast..

In my haste skim reading, the title initially came across as "Stinky Finger Problem"

not good to read having just taken a mouthful of coffee !!!!

Maybe its just my warped mind.

[Edited on 22/10/2011 by Hector.Brocklebank]

You can get fridge cleaning products in your local supermarket or hardware shop - they're usually a mix of detergent and disinfectant, with minimum pong.

Cheers all. Tray has been removed and cleaned, my god it was awful. Fingers crossed it sort it. Google says an open jar of coffee removes lingering fridge smells.

Probably no use on fingers though. Which funnily enough Hector, also stink now despite having been washed 4 times!

Bad times...