Compressed air.

I don't have an air compressor, but is that the stuff that comes in a can for cleaning computer keyboards?

Stores sell vacuum cleaner attachments for cleaning under appliances.

google: vacuum cleaner attachment for cleaning under refrigerators. There are attachments the diameter of a pencil, attachments that are an inch or so wide and maybe a quarter inch tall.

would a garden hose fit?, make an adapter and use a short length of garden hose.

A pvc cap with copper tubing. Drill a hole in a pvc cap, insert a short length of copper tubing, adapt the pvc cape to fit your shop vac.

I guess you could put your shop vac on blow.

try a specialty retailer, I do not rely on advice from Lowe's, HD. Car detailers have attachments that fit almost everywhere.

how small is the access?

A picture would help.

What I do for a bottom coil to do some of it is pull the frig out a ways so that it can be leaned back carefully on a good angle. An assistant takes control. Then the coils are at least accessible across the entire bottom surface using a shop vac and flat nozzle with a brush in my other hand. The shopvac does work as long as you loosen the dirt with a brush. It has absolutely for me from the bottom.

Shop vac or air-in-a-can won't be strong enough to do an effective job. An air compressor with blow-nozzle is ideal ... but will be messy, blowing the debris around your kitchen.

Years ago - before every thing became illegal - I used to 'blow out the condenser' with Freon :)

Thanks for all the responses. I've already tried the diameter-of-a-pencil vacuum cleaner attachment made for that purpose. Too big. Leaning the fridge back is the way I did it years ago, but I don't have anyone who is able to help me do that now. What's frustrating is Whirlpool knows you can't clean these coils. They say you don't really have to unless you have long-haired dogs, which I do. Before I knew the coils had to be cleaned, I burned up a fridge by not doing it. The repairman removed what looked like a thick cushion made of dog hair that was wedged against the coils.

Well at least you don't have a cleaning problem anymore. You just have a 'get a friend over' problem.

You can buy a coil brush just for this in most hardware stores. It does a reasonably good job and is not expensive.

Thanks, but the smallest one made does not fit in the openings. Already tried that.

JudyCl,

Can you post a picture of the condensor from your POV for access to clean? I'm curious what's the design. I haven't seen recent refrigerator offerings.

My GE SxS has what's called a jelly-roll coil. Circular with a fan at one end that pulls air through. It's not supposed to need cleaning but does collect dust/debris, and is reasonably accessible to clean by removing the rear panel. I vacuum most of it, air compressor to finish.

I considered using my leaf blower since I don't have an air compressor.....might try it tomorrow.

Please let us know how that worked and how long it took to clean up your kitchen. That's what I will be doing with the shop vac.

Dadoes - I tried taking a picture and it doesn't look like much. The coils I'm talking about are underneath, not in the back. Whirlpool told me in no uncertain terms to not try to access the coils from the back. Anyway, I'll try to describe them for you. If you put the side of your face on the floor in front of the fridge and looked underneath, picture a grid with openings about 1/4" wide angled toward you. Then the next piece, behind it, is angled away. If you could look from the side of the fridge, I imagine it would look like a bunch of W's.

Model number? I can look up parts diagrams online.

WRT311FZDMOO. Thank you!

The last two characters are zeros, not letter Os. :-)

Are you trying to access the condensor from the front, through the space at the toekick? There's a panel on back that should give much better access. Be careful with the panel if it's cardboard or pressed board. Don't tear or damage it. It's an important for properly directing the airflow over the coil.

I don't know anything about the condenser or where it is. What I'm trying to clean are the coils underneath the fridge, near the floor.

That is the condensor. The coils that get cold inside the freezer is the evaporator.

I have a Whirlpool like that, I don't know if the same model but it is the same as described. You cannot access the coils from behind, believe me, I took it apart thinking I could get to them. You cannot! I have not found anything to get in there. I think a can of air would work, just do it often so it doesn't build up. I just vacuum the front and call it done because there's no way to get to it. Another thing is when I pulled it out and took the back off, when I rolled it back in, the door became out of whack and the level had to be all readjusted so the door wouldn't keep slamming closed on me...what a pita!

Hey, Arkansas Girl. Thanks so much for writing. It helps to know I'm not the only one scratching my head over this. You were brave to take the back off, and I appreciate being able to cross that off my list of things to try. I'm thinking shop vac on blow, as long as there aren't any wires under there I could mess up.

Yes I wish I could help, I don't think that blowing it would hurt anything. What happened with me is, my BIL that is an electrician/plumber by trade was over putting in a new outlet for the fridge and he is the one that told me to pull off the back and clean it. So that's what I did only to find out that I did a bunch of work for nothing. The coils are blocked off from the back. So I took off about a dozen screws for nothing. HA!

Update:

Just cleaned the dust from the coils with a leaf blower.

Worked great.

Made sure I had the windows open, fridge unplugged, front and back bottom open, and let it rip. Spent about 20 seconds on it. Yes, blew a lot of dust around but I vacuumed it up in about 10 minutes.

bear in mind I have an electric blower, not gas. I don't think I would use gas inside the house.

Hmm. Interesting and unexpected, but not necessarily surprising. Is the condensor fan accessible from the back even if the condensor isn't? The desk-set engineers seem to go out of their way to make service access increasingly difficult as designs evolve.

Joe, thanks for the update. A few days ago I wrote Whirlpool (again) and asked if there was any reason I couldn't use my shop vac on blow. Too bad I didn't think of asking them about a leaf blower instead, especially a gas-powered one used in the house. LOL. My mission in life seems to be to annoy manufacturers with questions that they haven't given their poor customer service reps the answers to. One of my favorite responses is that only the technical department would have that information but no, they never talk to customers. What was I thinking?

There is no reason that a compressor would be different from an electric leaf blower aside from the fine air blast from the compressor (finer direction control) and wide/large lower pressure blast from the leaf blower.

I have an 11 year old Sears/Whirlpool basic model with what sounds like a similar floor condenser. Yes, it is a pain. I think I tried my compressor once. I have some very long handled very narrow brushes (no idea of purpose from an auction) that could get between some of the larger gaps and that helps knock some of the fuzz off. But I agree, it is really impossible to get at much of the coils.

I let the crud blow around with the compressor, but I could have draped some plastic in front to contain most of the crud. I may try that next time I get the compressor.

Knowing ahead that the dust would fly, I just blew out the dust from my coils under the refrigerator. It worked very well. After I was all done getting it as clean as it was gonna get under and along the side, I switched my shop-vac back to vacuum and cleaned up all the dust bunnies on the floor, wall, counter, etc. My shop vac air flow is stronger on "Blow" than it is on "Vacuum".

Just found this thread, have had the SAME problem for years! There is NO WAY to clean the coils under the fridge! I was just under there with my latest attempt with a brand new 'fridge coil cleaning brush' that is the absolute tiniest I've ever found. NOPE. The coils are at most 1/4" apart and I have tried everything possible....even pipe cleaners. NOTHING works. I guess I can try blowing the hell out of them, but OMG what a dumb thing to have to do and not very thorough AND will blow crud all over my house. STUPID.

UPDATE: Just did another search for tiny micro brushes...found (and bought) these which are almost 8" long and the smallest is VERY tiny: https://www.ebay.com/itm/223503658013

It would be great to hear how it goes when you try the brushes. I think 8" would be too short for what I'm looking at, but yes, they are at most 1/4" apart.

Oh yes, they are too short. BUT, it's better than anything else I've found after looking and trying different ones for years. Thinking logically, to be super long and super micro is impossible since the wire must also be very narrow. The longer it is, the less strength...so a 2-3 foot wire with a micro brush to fit a 1/4" gap is (probably) impossible. We shall see how this one does!!

Makes sense. Thanks for the info and good luck!

. . . ..

Long story short....using our electric blower was the way to go. Yes, it made a mess. But it worked. I have the EGo and used short bursts of super high and it took 5-10 seconds then 20-30 minutes to clean up. AND I have this cool set of brushes to use on other things. LOL

I know this discussion thread is very old. But the problem still exists in Jan. of 2026! OMFG! Anyway, what I ended up doing is I bought a "refrigerator cooling fin" brush, which we all know is too wide to clean refrigerator cooling fins, and then I played Barbershop and took a pair of scissors and trimmed the bristles to create a much smaller diameter brush. That worked!