Levelling a fridge, a dishwasher and a cooker.

Fridges and freezers.

A fridge is the one appliance in the kitchen that should not be level front-to-back. It wants to lean backwards slightly, and for two separate reasons.

The first is the door. A fridge door is heavy, opened dozens of times a day, and frequently left resting against its stop while someone decides what to have for lunch. A cabinet tilted back a degree lets gravity swing the door closed on its own from a small opening. Level it perfectly and the door will happily hang open; tilt it forward and it becomes a trap for warm air, condensation and a freezer full of frost.

The second is drainage. Frost-free and most static fridges collect condensate at a channel and drain hole at the back of the fridge compartment, which pipes it to an evaporation tray on top of the compressor. That drain relies on the water running backwards. A cabinet that leans forward pools water in the salad drawer instead, which is the single most common cause of the mysterious puddle at the bottom of a fridge.

What to aim for

Most manufacturers ask for the front to sit somewhere between 5 mm and 12 mm higher than the back across the depth of the cabinet. On a typical 600 to 650 mm deep fridge that works out at roughly 0.5° to 1.0° of backward tilt. Side-to-side is different: that one should be as close to level as you can get it, because it is what keeps the door seal even along its whole length and, on a double door, what stops the two doors sitting at visibly different heights.

So the target is: left-to-right at 0°, and front-to-back leaning back by about half a degree to a degree. Read the two axes separately rather than using the bullseye, since you are aiming at a different number on each.

Doing it

1. Empty enough weight out that you can move it, and pull the fridge forward. Most have two adjustable front feet and either fixed rear feet or castors.
2. Rest the phone on top of the cabinet, running left to right, and wind the front feet until that axis reads zero. If the top is not flat — some have a moulded lip — use a rigid straightedge across it and put the phone on that.
3. Turn the phone through 90° so it reads front-to-back, and wind both front feet up together until it shows about 0.5° to 1.0° with the front high. Keep the turns matched or you will undo the side-to-side setting.
4. Check the door. Open it about 30 cm and let go. It should drift shut. If it does not, add a little more backward tilt.

One unrelated thing worth saying while the fridge is out: if it has just been delivered, or has been laid on its side or back, stand it upright and leave it unplugged for several hours before switching it on — most manufacturers say four, some say longer. Compressor oil needs to drain back out of the refrigerant lines, and running it too soon is a good way to kill a new appliance.

Dishwashers.

A dishwasher wants to be level in both directions, and it is fussier about it than a fridge is.

The machine works with a shallow pool of water in a sump at the bottom of the tub, and it decides how much water to take in using a float or a pressure sensor sitting in that pool. Tip the tub and the water gathers at one end: the sensor either reads full early, so the machine underfills and washes badly, or reads low, so it overfills and can trip the anti-flood device. A tilted tub also drains incompletely, leaving a puddle in the corner that goes stale between washes.

The door is the other half of it. A dishwasher door is counterbalanced by springs or a cable so that it stays put wherever you leave it. That balance is calculated for a level machine. A cabinet leaning forward gives you a door that crashes open; leaning back and it will not stay down for loading the bottom basket.

Doing it

Front feet adjust by hand or with a spanner. The rear foot on most machines is adjusted from the front, by a screw behind the kickplate that turns a shaft running to the back — worth knowing before you try to drag a plumbed-in machine out of its slot.

Read on the inside of the tub rather than the outside of the door. Slide the lower basket out, rest the phone flat on the floor of the tub next to the sump, and use the bullseye. That is the surface the water actually sits on. Aim inside 0.5° on both axes.

If it is an integrated machine, level it before you fix it to the worktop or the neighbouring units, and check the reading again afterwards — screwing a machine to a cabinet that is itself out of true will pull it back off level.

Cookers and ranges.

For a cooker the surface that matters is the hob. Oil in a frying pan finds the low corner and pools there, so one side of a pancake cooks while the other steams, and a shallow pan of anything liquid sits visibly off-centre. Anyone who has tried to fry an egg on a tilted hob has already diagnosed this.

Put the phone on the hob itself, using the bullseye, and level both axes to within about 0.5°. On a gas hob, lift the pan supports off first and rest the phone on the flat enamel between the burners; on induction or ceramic, the glass is already the flattest reference in the kitchen. Freestanding cookers have four adjustable feet, usually reached by pulling out the bottom storage drawer, and on some models by a nut at each corner of the plinth.

The oven is a separate question

If cakes come out with one side higher than the other, check the shelf rather than the hob. Ovens are not always assembled with the runners square to the cabinet, and a shelf can sit off level even when the appliance does not. Put the phone directly on the cold shelf, in the position you actually bake in, and read it there. If the shelf is out but the hob is level, the fix is a shelf or runner adjustment, not the feet.

Two safety notes

• The anti-tip bracket. A freestanding cooker must be restrained so it cannot tip forward when weight goes on an open door. That is a bracket or chain fixed to the wall or floor, engaging a foot or the back panel. If you have pulled the cooker out to adjust the feet, make sure it re-engages when you push it back. This is not optional and it is not a levelling refinement.
• Gas. A gas cooker is connected by a flexible hose with a limited safe range of movement, and the connection must not be strained or twisted. If levelling requires more than easing the appliance forward on its feet, that is work for a registered gas engineer, not a DIY afternoon.

Where to rest the phone.

The reading is only as good as the surface under it, and appliance casings are full of surfaces that lie. Pressed steel lids bow, plastic mouldings have draft angles so they can leave the tool that made them, and control panels are usually raked on purpose.

Take the phone case off for any of these. A raised lip around the screen or a camera bump will rock the handset and add error that has nothing to do with the appliance.

Tolerances at a glance.

Your appliance's own manual outranks this table. Manufacturers differ, and a few specify the fridge tilt in millimetres of door-top offset rather than degrees. Where the manual gives a figure, use it. Washing machines have their own longer article, because the failure mode there is a machine that moves rather than one that drains badly: levelling a washing machine.