Yes – I have sinned; I did not clean the venting outlets in the back of my refrigerator, and it temporarily stopped working.
Now the freezer works fine, but the main compartment is around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of the settings.
Any advice before getting to the expensive phase?
Do you mean the cold air vents inside the refrigerator? If so, try cleaning the condensing coil on the back of the refrigerator, as a buildup of dust can reduce the efficiency of the cooling cycle. Also, make sure there is nothing obstructing the free flow of air around the coil; sometimes people store stuff back there that reduces the air flow causing the refrigeration cycle to lose efficiency.
If the freezer is cold and the fridge isn’t, it might mean that the auto defroster on the freezer coils (the ones inside the freezer) isn’t working properly, causing the coils to become plugged with ice so no air is getting through them into the fridge.
At least that’s what kept happening to my old fridge.
I had to remove the back panel inside the freezer to gain access to the coils and manually defrost with warm water (with the fridge unplugged, of course) every once and a while. This would clear it up enough that the partially working defroster could handle things for a couple of months or so.
Eventually we got rid of that fridge, as that wasn’t the only problem it had. I don’t think a full defroster system replacement was that particuarly expensive or difficult to do. Replacing everything else that was broken, including the door and the ice maker, was what doomed it.
I’d vote with buckgully. It sounds as though the whole unit needs to be thoroughly defrosted. (If the defrosting coils picked up a coat of ice while your fridge was spiralling down to “I won’t work” status, there may be too much build-up of frost/ice to let it work completely, now.)
Empty it all out into coolers, look for all the removable panels hiding interior coils, and make sure those are all thoroughly defrosted–then call the repair guy when that is not enough.
Other issues may exist. Older units placed the condensing coils on the back of the cabinet, but I haven’t seen that arrangement in a while. They now live underneath the cabinet, and are accessible either from the front kickplate below the door(s), the rear, or both. You can purchasse a long cleaning brush to dislodge dirt and pet hair from the coils, and another option is to tape a cardboard tube, slightly flattened to your crevice tool and vac off all of the crud. Hard tools on coils are a bad plan.
Check the fan which works to draw air across the condensing coils in the cabinet bottom. Is it running? Are it’s blades ganked up with filth? You’ll typically gain access to this from the rear of the cabinet-a cardboard like panel across the back about a foot high can be removed to get to these parts. Be particularly careful if your refrigerator freezer has cold water/ice connection via copper or plastic supply so that isn’t damaged.
Lastly, there is a fan in the freezer cabinet where the evaporator coils live. If that fan fails, the coils will build ice like gangbusters, and there is no circulation to drive air into the refrigerator compartment.