Our household fridge has started acting up. I'm probably gonna have to get someone out to look at it, I thought of asking the brains trust on here first though, to see if I can get a diagnosis....

What it's doing:
The temp in both the fridge and freezer are nowhere near as cold as usual. Both the temp adjustment knobs are cranked right up, yet the bread in the freezer is only half frozen (it usually freezes bread quite well) and things in the fridge are noticeably less cool. The compressor is still turning itself on and off and there's still cold air going into both sections but its just not as cold.

On a side note, it's also blown the light globe. Don't know if the two incidents are related or not?

It's a Simpson fridge, which has up till now given many years of faithful service, despite the punishment it has been dealt in a busy share house

Beaglebuddy said..

I work on A/C not refrigeration but here is a possible cause, the coils located on the exterior either underneath or behind the unit could well be clogged with lint preventing the heat from dissipating into the air. In this situation the compressor would probably run continuously unless it's getting too hot and cycling on and off.

Hmm, Its not running continuously, but Im pretty sure its turning on and off a lot more frequently than it should be/usually does on a cold winters day, looks like I might be shopping for a new fridge

Its about 6 years old, I'm not gonna retire it straight up. Like you say a bit of research/checking first, I'd rather spend hundreds on a repair than thousands on a new one. I thought it might have been something to do with the thermostat, but the symptoms you describe match what it's doing....

Geez Dave!

Subsonic said..


Its about 6 years old, I'm not gonna retire it straight up. Like you say a bit of research/checking first, I'd rather spend hundreds on a repair than thousands on a new one. I thought it might have been something to do with the thermostat, but the symptoms you describe match what it's doing....

I've repaired quite a few fridges in my time and six years old is not that old at all, but the symptoms you describe don't lend themselves to anything obvious
if the rear coil was blocked enough to cause a problem then it would definitely not cycle in and out it would keep running until it locks out on high pressure so it's very unlikely that this is the case.
being six years old i'd assume it is a frost free fridge/ freezer and would have at least one fan and as has already been said by Beaglebuddy - check that fans are working in my experience these are the most common items to fail (in modern fridges). fan failure in the fridge is usually the easiest one to spot as there is usually quite a large temperature difference between the different shelves
With fan failure in the fridge sometimes you will get items towards the back of the fridge freezing you can test this out by placing a tomato right at the back (but not touching 1 - 2 cm from the back/coil) top shelf or second one down usualy leave it a day or two and see if it freezes if so its definitely the fan

If that didn't get results then you can test your thermostats usually hidden in the fridge or freezer behind a thin white plastic panel in the back wall or the roof the panel will either be clipped or screwed int place. I usually warm them up with some warm water (don't go mad and boil the kettle) wrap them in some cloth to insulate them to see if i can pull the temperature down further than it was already (a thermometer would be handy to see the change here)


Fridges are usually pretty hardy and it is extremely rare in my experience to see one that is only six years old be a bin job unless:
-It has been laid on its back or side for transit and run before the oil has had time to settle back into place
-It has one of those stupid screens and a processor running it and these are only normally junked because the computer costs more than the whole fridge does to replace

Finally and sorry for stating the obvious here - give it a good clean out and defrost , even a frost free freezer can end up with a bit of ice or a foreign particle blocking the air passage that sometimes is there for a fan to cycle in and out to keep the fridge at the correct temperature (between fridge and freezer)

good luck with your fault finding hope this helps

sounds like its not going into defrost.

De frost it manually and try again.

Fridges can have quite a few different de frost mechanism,

Hot gas, = noisy

Off cycle, not commom

Electric resitive heat most common, if its failing to de frost the comp will still cycle, but the evaportor (the cold coil) will not complete de ice = poor performance.

+1 to the manual defrost, but if you can store the contents of the fridge elsewhere try and leave it overnight with the door open. Give the innards every chance to defrost and drain away. Plus everything BeagleBuddy said about cleaning the coils and vents.

joeyjojo said..
Mine did the same; ^Manual defrost was the go. Ice was stopping the fan in the back of the freezer from spinning in-turn no cool air being distributed to the fridge!

Had the same issue with mine!

I had a split on a seal on the freezer door and I left it for maybe 18 months before I finally replaced it two weeks ago. When I undid the screws for the seal I found the void inside the freezer door was frozen solid with ice. I'm guessing it wasn't so good for the efficiency of the freezer... turns out every time the freezer went through a chill cycle the air inside the door void chilled, contracted and sucked a little bit of fresh air and moisture in with it through the split seal, that froze, and the cycle repeated.

I knew a dodgy seal is inefficient but but I thought it was just cold air leaking out/hot air sneaking in, I never considered the door would freeze solid.

pweedas said..

Turn it off before you start poking around inside or you might get electroluxed.
Foreeze a jolly good fellow.

That reminds me of the time I was working in a pizza shop with a dodgy coolroom, the bloody thing always froze up. We tried lots of different things to defrost it on a regular basis. I ended up climbing up on the roof of the coolroom, turned it off, read a little wiring diagram and pulling a wire for the compressor. Worked a treat, the fans ran without the compressor and in no time the unit was defrosted. We did it once a week and it worked a treat.

Then I got lazy and did it without turning off the power, I promptly got zapped

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