Tag Archives: fridge not working

What to Do If Your Fridge Stops Cooling

Have you noticed that your fridge is no longer cooling the food, and you wonder what to do if your fridge stops cooling? Well, there are plenty of things you can do to bring your appliance back to working order. And the beauty is you don’t have to hire a refrigerator repair professional to help with fixing it.

Some of the things you should do include:

Clean the condenser coils

Condenser coils are located under or behind the fridge (depending on the fridge model), and their role is to cool and condense the refrigerant. When you go for a long time without cleaning your appliance, dirt collects on the coils, and this prevents the heat from being released efficiently, and it ends up in the fridge.

You should inspect the coils, and if dirty, clean them with a handheld vacuum or special refrigerator coil brush.

Fix the broken condenser fan

The condenser fan is located in a cabinet at the bottom of the fridge, near the condenser coils and compressor. Its job is to keep the compressor and coils cool.

When is the last time you hired an appliance repair contractor to inspect your appliance? If it has been long and your fridge is still not cooling, chances are high the condenser fan is broken, and when the fan breaks down, the fridge begins to heat up.

To restore your fridge to proper working condition, check whether the fan blade is broken. While at it, inspect it to see if dust or debris is present on the fan blades.

If the fan blade is broken, you might have to hire a contractor to help you replace it, but you need to gently wipe the blades with a clean towel if dirty.

As you are cleaning them, rotate them. Are they rotating? If they aren’t, you might be having a problem with the fan’s motor.

Motors don’t come cheap so before you replace them, consider the age of your appliance. If your fridge is over 10 years and it has been consistently developing problems, you are better off simply replacing the unit as there is no point in installing an expensive fan motor on a dying refrigerator.

On the other hand, if your appliance is just a few years old, you can go ahead and buy a fan motor for your appliance. When buying a new unit, ensure that it’s high quality and will last for a long time.

Fix the evaporator fan

Evaporator coils are located in a panel behind the freezer, and the refrigerant runs through the coils and turns to gas and makes the coils cold, and consequently, the food in the fridge cools.

The evaporator fan draws the cool air from the coils to circulate throughout the entire unit, where it begins from the freezer and then into the refrigerator.

If the evaporator fan is broken, cool air doesn’t circulate properly, and it’s not uncommon to end up with a freezer that is cold as the freezer area is near where the coils are located. Although the freezer will be cold, the food compartment doesn’t get cold as the cold air isn’t getting pushed there.

If the problem is due to a faulty evaporator fan, you should replace the fan motor. Like in the previous scenario, only install a new motor if your appliance is still new and in good condition. Don’t install an expensive motor on an appliance that is on its deathbed.

Remove frost from the evaporator coils.

As mentioned above, the evaporator fan draws cool air from the evaporator coils and moves it throughout the entire refrigerator, including the freezer.

When the fan stops working, and you don’t fix it early enough, the coils might frost over.

To remove the frost from the coils, you should remove the back panel and let the coils thaw for a day or two.

If the fan has been running, but the coils have frosted over, the frosting might be due to another reason that should be looked at by an experienced and certified commercial appliance repair Fairfax professional.

You should never ignore the frosted coils as they can bring about a plethora of problems such as a malfunctioning defrost heater and broken defrost thermostat.

6 Reasons Why the Fridge Is Not Cold but The Freezer Is

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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.