Last night my fridge started making a noise, every twenty minutes or so, consisting in a click followed by a crunchy kind of buzzing sound. It lasts maybe three seconds.
It is still freezing and refrigerating just fine (though, probably coincidentally, the light in the freezer stopped working as well–I don’t know how closely simultaneously this occurred, and I haven’t had a chance to see if it’s just a burned out bulb or something else).
Ever had this happen? What could be going on with my fridge?
I’ve heard fridges make all sorts of weird sounds like you describe. My old one used to make a tap-tap-tap-tap sound accompanied by a noise like rushing wind.
Has something changed to make your house quieter or make you more aware of the fridge; could it have been making those noises all along as part of its defrost cycle or whatnot?
You know, I’d forgotten about the ice maker. It does have one, but it’s not actually hooked up to the water system so I think of the thing as not having an ice maker. I’ll look into the question of whether it may be trying to kick in for some reason.
As to the automatic defrosting cycle, I’ll have to look into that as well.
Providing the make and model number of the fridge might help with a diagnosis.
OTOH, the “crunchy kind of buzzing sound” could be partially frozen flys trying to flap their wings, and the clicking sound could be the collective chatter of their cold, little teeth??? Or not.
It could be a problem with the compressor starting up, bearings going perhaps. That doesn’t seem to match your sound effects but noisy compressor starts are an indication of compressor bearings going bad.
We get this noise frequently - we also don’t have the ice maker hooked up.
Look in the freezer around ice maker/tray for a lever. It turns the ice maker on and off. Sometimes a package nudges the lever into the on position. It cycles to see if there’s water/ice to flow and buzzes when there’s no action.
It stopped making the noise a few hours ago, and this was after I opened and closed the freezer for an unrelated purpose. I believe, probably, something had nudged the lever, and when I opened and closed the freezer, this item shifted and it is no longer being nudged.
