SD,
I have a 4 month old refrigerator and all has been well until I opened the freezer tonight and all the food now looks like it was hit with a winter ice storm https://www.flickr.com/gp/138720705@N05/09XC42
Hopefully I added the picture correctly.
I was last in the freezer 2 days ago and all was fine. I have noticed today that the fridge was making unusually noises.
The refrigerator is a Kenmore with the freezer section on the bottom if that makes any difference.
Getting ready to leave for the Holidays so I really hope this is just a matter of the kids leaving the door ajar a bit.
Yea, it really could be from just leaving the door not quite shut. One of my cousins with two kids and lots of friends running around since they have the big house on the block, got a fridge that sounds an alarm when the door is open too long.
The usual cause of this is ice forming on the freezer’s evaporator coils.
You can get ice on your evaporator coils if warm air is leaking into the freezer. The moisture in the warm air will condense and freeze on the coils. The air could be leaking because someone left the freezer door cracked, either because there was something in the freezer that prevented it from shutting properly, or maybe something dripped and formed ice on the door seal, so check the seal for small pieces of ice that might be preventing it from closing properly.
You can check the seal itself with a small piece of paper or a dollar bill. Close the door onto the paper, and pull the paper out while keeping the door closed. A good seal won’t trap the paper and make it impossible to pull out or anything even close to that, but you should feel some resistance as you pull the paper out. If you don’t feel any resistance at all, that part of the door seal is bad. Check all around the seal for bad spots.
Unless your freezer was built around the same time that Leave it to Beaver was airing new shows on TV, chances are you have a frost-free freezer. These work by having a small heater attached to the evaporator coils. Heating a cooling coil may seem kinda silly, but they aren’t both on at the same time. The heating element only kicks on periodically, and only long enough to melt any ice that might be on the evaporator. If you are getting ice on your food and you don’t have a door seal problem (or a kid leaving the door open problem), then the next most likely problem is that the heating element has gone wonky. The defroster won’t kick on if the temperature in the freezer is too high, so another potential problem is the temperature sensor.
When the frost is melted off of the evaporator, the resulting water is supposed to go down a drain tube. If that tube is blocked, the water may end up re-freezing on the evaporator.
I’d say the most likely of all of these is one of your kids.
