In a perfect scenario, the freezer and fridge should always be cold and in perfect working conditions, but this isn’t always the case. If your freezer is working, but your fridge isn’t, it means you have a problem in your hands, and you should have an appliance repair professional look at it.
Are you wondering why the fridge is not cold, but the freezer is? There are plenty of reasons this might be the case. Some of these reasons include:
The evaporator coils are covered in frost.
When the evaporator coils are covered in frost, air doesn’t get space to pass through them to get cold, hence a warm refrigerator. To restore the fridge, remove the frost by blowing hot hair over it.
If you do this, then after a few days, the problem recurs, you might be having a problem with the defrost heater. Check the heater and confirm that it’s working perfectly.
The defrost timer is malfunctioning.
The defrost system relies on the control board to control it, and the timer makes the heater turn. This means that if the timer is malfunctioning, the heater won’t start working, and frost will form on the coils preventing the fridge from cooling.
To fix this issue, try advancing the timer dial to the defrost cycle. If the heater doesn’t come on within 30 minutes, consider replacing the timer.
The thermistor is broken.
Thermistors monitor the refrigerator’s temperature and relay the information to the main control board. When the temperature gets too high or low, the control board turns the compressor on and off as needed.
A broken thermistor causes the compressor to run too often, or it doesn’t run enough, leading to improper temperatures. Use a multimeter to test your thermistor for continuity and install a new one if the current one is broken.
The evaporator fan is defective.
For the fridge to cool, the evaporator fan has to draw cold air over the evaporator coil. This means that when the fan is defective, it doesn’t draw cold air; hence the fridge doesn’t cool.
To find out if this is the cause of the problem, turn the fan blade using your hand. A properly functioning fan should run smoothly, so if there is resistance, the fan is defective, and you should get a new one. You also should get a new fan if the current one is noisy.
The damper control assembly is faulty.
The damper allows cold air into the fridge from the freezer section. This means that if the damper blocks or stops working, little or no air gets into the refrigerator section.
To determine if the damper is the reason for the warm fridge, you need to physically inspect the damper and see whether it’s opening and closing correctly. If it’s not functioning properly, replace it.
You have overstuffed the fridge.
When you overstock the fridge, you save money you would have spent cooling small chunks of foods, right? Wrong. When you stock your fridge with more food items than it can take, you prevent air from circulating, as well as it should, and without proper air circulation, the fridge cannot maintain a cool interior.
To restore the unit to proper working condition, you need to remove the excess food. The proper way to go about this is to remove all the foods in the fridge and clean the insides with a clean cloth and warm soapy water. You should then rearrange the shelves to allow for better airflow. Once the shelves are in place, sort the foods and dispose of the old ones. You should restock the fridge only with fresh foods.
Understand your fridge first
From the problems and solutions presented above, you can see that the fridge problem you have can be fixed even with basic skills. It’s always wise to hire a refrigerator to repair Alexandria to look into the issue and fix it, but if you don’t have the money for it, try to fix it yourself.
If this is the first time opening up the fridge, don’t go at it blindly—first, take time to understand the various parts and how they work. Thankfully, you can get most of the information from your refrigerator user’s manual.