One repair person I spoke to said that what could have happened was that the conduit through which the cold air passes from the freezer to the frig could have frozen up and got blocked with ice. Emptying the frig/freezer and letting all the ice melt did seem to help for a short time but we seem to be back to the same situation.
Any suggestions on what else I could try? Also any suggestions for a good refrigerator repair person?
A: What is the time frame between when you let the ice melt and you noticed the temp in the fridge compartment getting warm again?
That could indicate that your defrost timer or heater are not working.
A: I would bet on the heater element being broken.
When you get this fixed, I suggest that you spend the time to let the ice melt before the repair person shows up – otherwise you’ll be paying for them to melt the ice.
A: If your Refrigerator is side by side, you should read the manual first. There are some vents between two parts to let cool air flow from freezer to other side and warm air flow back into freezer. You should check those vents that should indicates in manual. If something block it, just remove them.
A: But notice in his post, he said melting the ice seemed to help for awhile, but then it went back the other way.
Sometimes it is all too easy to hit the setting for that cross over vent and not realize it. However, if that were the case, even after the defrost, there would be no significant difference in the perceived operaton.
Q: It seemed to be better for a couple of days (when we actually did not open the fridge too much) before it seemed not to cool again. Yes my fridge is side by side and it is the vents between the two parts which was blocked with ice.
What function does the heater element perform?
A: To cool down the interior, the fridge pumps very cold gas through a set of coils in the freezer (at least in most designs – some use multiple coils). The gas is below freezing, so if there is any moisture in the air, the coils will get a coating of frost on them. Over time, this builds up, and because ice is a pretty good insulator, you lose efficiency and cooling capacity (and in your case, block the vents, too).
In the olden days, you had to defrost the freezer at specific times to keep this from happening (and you still have to do this on many standalone freezers).
The advent of “frost-free” fridges got rid of this. There is a defrost timer that periodically turns off the compressor (so there is no cooling going on) and turns on a heater (or heaters) near the coils. Those heat the coils, the frost drips off as water, and then things are great.
If you heaters break, you get a continual accumulation of ice.
No comments:
Post a Comment