The cabinet and the opening it sits in
A Smell That Cleaning Does Not Fix
A clean cabinet that still smells means the water, not the shelves.
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| What you see | Likely cause | Safe check | When to call |
|---|---|---|---|
| A cabinet you have just cleaned that still smells sour | Standing water in the drain and its trap, out of reach of any cloth | Look for damp underneath the drawers rather than inside them | When convenient, saying the shelves are already clean |
| The smell is strongest low down, near the floor | The pan the melt water runs into, under the cabinet behind the grille | Nothing to reach here; note where the smell is worst and when | When it suits you. Mention the toe kick |
| It began with a spill and has never left since | Liquid that found a seam and reached something that will not dry out | Try to recall roughly where the spill was and how long ago | When convenient, with that history |
| Clean cabinet, and the ice has taken the smell on too | One air space, so whatever the cabinet smells of the ice ends up tasting of | Empty the bin, wash it and let it refill over a couple of days | If the fresh ice tastes the same |
The table above takes a smell that has survived a proper clean-out and sorts it by where it is coming from rather than by what it smells of. Row one covers most of them. A cabinet cleaned out and smelling again within days is worth a call to Viking Repair Service Los Angeles, (213) 799-7879.
The water you cannot see
Rows one and two are one fault at two heights. Every cold cabinet makes water, and that water runs away down a drain to somewhere it can evaporate. Let the line silt up or the pan sit unemptied and you have standing water in a warm spot under a kitchen, which smells as you would expect.
Spills, air and ice
Rows three and four outlast even a drain clean. A spill that got past a liner has reached material that never dries, and no surface work touches it. Ice is the tell-tale: it sits in the same air as everything else, so cubes that taste of the cabinet confirm what your nose reported. Where a cabinet has a filter in the air path, that is checked too.
Normal, not normal, and the line between them
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Normal
A faint cold-cabinet smell that a wash-down and an airing clears.
Not normal
A sour edge back within days of a thorough clean-out.
Time to call
When convenient, once you have cleaned it properly once.
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Normal
Damp at the back of a shelf after a humid day of door traffic.
Not normal
Standing water beneath the drawers that keeps coming back.
Time to call
This week. That is drainage, not a spill.
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Normal
New food smelling of itself for a day or two.
Not normal
Everything in the cabinet, and the ice with it, tasting of the cabinet.
Time to call
When it suits you. Say the ice has it too.
A smell a full clean-out removes is housekeeping; a smell that survives one is drainage. Call Viking Repair Service Los Angeles at (213) 799-7879 and describe the row you are on — that sentence is worth more than a guess at the part.
Safe checks before the visit
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Empty the cabinet, wash the shelves and liners in warm soapy water, dry them and leave the doors open an hour. This page assumes that has been done once.
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Look under the drawers for water that keeps returning. A cabinet wet where it should be dry is telling you the drain is the problem and the shelves are not.
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Empty the ice bin, wash it and let it refill over a couple of days before judging the taste. Ice standing in a cabinet that smells takes the smell on regardless.
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Stop there. Nothing further is an owner job on a built-in: the sealed circuit, the wiring behind the grille and anything that needs a panel off belong to the visit. Call Viking Repair Service Los Angeles at (213) 799-7879 and say which of the checks above changed anything.
Asked about this one
- Why does the smell come back after a thorough clean?
- Because what a cloth reaches is rarely where it is coming from. Water leaves the cabinet down a drain and collects in a pan underneath, and neither of those is part of a clean-out. Viking Repair Service Los Angeles clears and flushes that path, which is what makes the difference last.
- Written by
- Ambrose Fitzwilliam
- Role
- Service technician — refrigeration and sealed systems
- In the trade
- 25 years in the trade