My refrigerator stopped working this weekend and I had to throw out some food, I’m not risking food poising over few dollars worth of sandwich meat.
So, maintenance came by yesterday and they said that it was due to an ice buildup inside the freezer.
I don’t know what model it is, it’s a whirlpool, the freezer is on top of the refrigerator. This apartment is new so I’d say it dates from around 2014 or so.
I’m a complete idiot when it comes to things like this, which is why I’m still a renter. But, I don’t understand how an ice buildup in the freezer causes the fridge to stop working. There is a lot of food in the freezer if that matters. Almost nothing in the fridge, but it couldn’t even keep a 6 pack of beer cold.
The freezer and fresh food compartments are connected. There are evaporator coils on your refrigerator. Or rather, almost certainly in your freezer compartment.
Your compressor will run, the coils get really cold, and that cold air gets circulated around via fans.
The coils get cold enough that moisture in the air freezes to them. There’s usually a defrost cycle to combat this. But if the defrost doesn’t work or doesn’t work well enough, the ice can build up and block air flow, which affects both compartments. You usually see the effects on the lower compartment first but even the freezer will eventually thaw if the problem is left uncorrected for long enough. It just takes longer because it starts out well below freezing to begin with.
ETA: And actually, having a lot of stuff in the freezer is probably helping keep it cold what with the heat capacity of water and all. One trick to make your refrigerator run somewhat more efficiently is to fill up empty space with jugs of water. Having a lot of empty space makes extra for work/electricity whenever warm air rushes in when the door opens. A bunch of already cold water reduces how uch work needs to be done.
The fridge is cooled by cold air that is drawn in from the freezer. If that connection is blocked, the fridge warms up even if the freezer is cold. At least that’s how our fridge works, I assume it’s a typical design.
Yep, it happened to me. The heater component of the defrost system failed and ice built up all along the back wall of the freezer. I only noticed when items in the refrigerator didn’t feel too cool. I did have to toss a lot from the fridge but the freezer stayed frozen and I was able to borrow room inside another one during repairs.
The worst part was that I failed to anticipate how much water was represented by 3 inches of solid ice melting overnight. I’d say it was a good bucketful.
Adding to what everyone else has said and taking it a step further. I have seen a freezer stop working as well because the iced up coils prevented the air circulation and thus the cold “distribution”. The thermostat was on the far side of the freezer so it turned on the compressor continuously-- until it ironically overheated and stopped. This eventually looks to have eventually killed the freezer altogether due to this death cycle.
Unplugging it for 24 hours may be only a temporary fix because the coils can ice over again if there is a problem with the unit.
One point that has not been truly pointed out on most refrigerators there is only one set of evaporator coils. this is why ice build up will affect both.
Yes. In the good old days (until maybe a few years ago) all “frost-free” refrigerators had a mechanical defrost cycle system - a small device with an electric motor would turn very slowly, closing contacts so that every day or so the cooling cycle would reverse and heat the coils for a short time to melt the frost buildup - which then drained to a pan under the fridge to evaporate. If this device fails, the fridge never runs the defrost cycle, and over time the cooling fins fill with ice and the fridge does not cool very well or at all. Usually this is what fails. This was the most common failure on fridges.
(I had a friend whose defrost timer failed in the “on” position so the whole freezer compartment was like a warming oven.)
For the fridge you describe - there is a set of cooling coils between the freezer compartment and the fridge compartment. There are two thermostat-controlled fans. one blows cold air over the coils into the freezer, and the other blows cold air from over the coils into the cooling compartment. The cooling coils are a snake of tubing with fins over it, like a radiator. Obviously, when the thermostat indicates the fridge side is cool enough, stop blowing over the cooling coils and the fridge does not get much colder. Ditto for freezer, it just cools for longer. When either fan runs, the compressor runs cooling the coils. If the defrost cycle does not run, eventually condensation frosts up until the cooling fins are filled with a solid lump of ice. This is nowhere near as effective at cooling passing air as hundreds of thin metal fins.
Unplug the fridge, wait 24 hours (with door open, so bye-bye food) and depending on humidity, you may have another 30 days or so before you rinse and repeat.
More modern fridges may have replaced this mechanical device with an electronic timer - but odds are it is still a simple module, mechanical or electronic, that can be removed and replaced on the back underside of the fridge near the compressor. As long as the compressor still makes ice the fridge is good, and this is a cheap repair.
Oh, and sometimes the drain path to the pan underneath is plugged (onion skin bits, fluff, etc.) and the bottom of the fridge cooling compartment fills with water when you defrost. Pull the fridge out and there is probably a thin plastic pipe running down the back of the fridge; pull it off and use a pipe cleaner or something to unplug the drain, usually clogged at the coil inlet or the elbow.