Hi, it's my first post on RE's forum. Hoping to get your help on this matter.
Recently our whirlpool 22 cubic feet chest freezer has caused large amounts of water to accumulate on our floating wood floor. At first, we thought the kids had dropped something but we soon realized that the unit is condensing water at a fast pace. The unit is 6 years old. It was resting on 3 2x6" wood pieces on a carpet floor up to last February at which moment we renovated that part of our basement. All was dry under the unit, the carped and bottom of unit were in perfect condition. Before moving the unit to re-surface the floor, we put the food outside (very cold winters out here) and let the unit completely unfreeze for a few days and cleaned the interior completely. We reinstalled it on the floating floor without the 2x6's. We respected the minimum 2" clearance on the back but could not maintain the 3 inches on the sides. We have 1/2" on each sides. After this water started accumulating ( six months after the above described procedure), I spoke with a friend that works at a Sears store ( not the store I bought the unit from ) and he told me that induction occurred and in order to prolong the life of the unit, I needed to put in the center part of the unit a piece of pink insulating foam to recreate the insulation as well as wood strips under it all. That could prolong life of the unit for up to 10 years. I then browsed through the web and I gathered that the problem might have occurred when we completely unfroze the unit...water sort of penetrated the urethane isolation hence favoring induction and the heavy condensation we are now experiencing. In any case, we appear to be up to the possibility of having to buy a new unit. Please advise me if you have a long term solution ( i.e. is my friend's advice on putting a pink urethane board under the unit a good advice) or if we need to purchase a new unit, how to avoid loosing our food while we resurface the floating wood floor (could take 3 days in all) as it is summer out here and hence we do not have the flexibility of putting the food outside while we fix the floor issue. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thanks for your prompt help on this cool issue!