This probably isn’t the best forum to ask this, but I’ve seen some appliance posts before, so thought I’d give it a shot…
We’re having a long battle with an appliance dealer in town and Frigidaire. Long story short, we waited 6 weeks to get a fridge that we should have had in 10 days only to have it die completely 2 months later over the holidays trashing $200 of food.
We finally convinced the dealer to just replace it. Which they did.
However, this fridge still has a problem. The fridge stays a steady temp at 37 degrees. The freezer, however, constantly cycles between 0 degress and 20+ degrees.
This seems wrong.
The minimum wage tech support person from frigidaire seems to agree saying that it should flucturate between -6 and 6 at most. Of course, she can’t point to any written documentation stating this.
The dealer repair person said that this is completely normal and that the coil defroster heater is just kicking in. It does that 3 times a day and the temp can get up to 25-30 degrees.
Does that sound right? Or is it just a line of BS?
Replies
What are you using to measure the temp. And where is it located?
Is ice melting?
Try putting the temp probe in a mass. A small cup of water will do.
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Fridge/freezer thermometers. The ice doesn't melt, it doesn't get above freezing. But everything I've read seems to indicate that the freezer should be at 0 and stay there.
I never trust the accuracy of any appliance thermometer.
Like Bill H said use an aftermarket thermometer in a mass add 1 tablespoon of salt to the cup so the water will not solidify below freezing.
“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few, his precepts! O! ‘tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.” —Benjamin Franklin
Sounds like BS, but you might want to go to one of the appliance repair forums to get a more focused opinion.
My favorite is the FixItNow Samurai Appliance Repair Forum at
http://www.applianceguru.com/
Thanks kabong!To clarify, it's an aftermarket thermometer. Two of them, actually!
That looks like a good forum, but you have to pau $5 to use it. I'm not necessarily against that, but it would have been nice if they explained that before going through all the registration process...
The bobvila forum has a good appliance section with a couple of appliance pros..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
The freezer coils do indeed go into a defrost cycle, typically every eight hours. Frost forms on the evaporator coils from any water vapor in the air from both sides of the refrigerator, and the accumulation must be removed before it builds up too much. Electric heat is applied to warm up the evaporator coil assembly to something above the freezing point, melting the frost, which runs down to a collector under the coils and out through a tube to a pan underneath the 'fridge, where the fan for the condensing coil assembly blows warm air from the condensing refrigerant evaporates the water. With the evaporator coil assembly above freezing, it is entirely possible that the air within the freezer compartment would warm up substantially above zero for the duration of the defrost cycle. Just how much it warms up depends on how much frozen stuff you have on the shelves and the total exposed surface area. It may depend also on how much frost must be melted from the coils. In general, it is a good idea to cover any liquids in either side of the refrigerator, especially on the above-freezing side, to retard frost formation in the freezer.
Last summer, my side-by-side wasn't holding temperature in either side. I first thought the two-year-old unit was toast until I unloaded the freezer to a chest, took the plastic cover off the evaporator coils, and stared at a huge mass of ice totally blocking all air circulation over the coils (there is a small fan that drives air around the whole unit). I theorized that at some point, with the humidity high, something had kept the freezer door from closing tightly, and the freezer began condensing/freezing a pile of moisture from air in the kitchen. Once the ice built up over eight hours, there was too much for the defrost cycle to remove in the time it had, and the situation perpetuated itself. I used my wife's hair dryer to do a power defrost, reassembled the plastic, and turned it back on. It's been fine since.
During the defrost cycle the fan should shut down, so that the heat from the coil heaters isn't carried into the freezer compartment.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. --T.S. Eliot
Oh, agreed, the fan shuts down, so no air flows to the non-freezer side and that side tends to hold its temperature. At least on mine, there is nothing to prevent natural convective flow across the warmed-up evaporator coils and throughout the freezer compartment. This flow will be far slower than with forced circulation, but it is there. If I pull stuff on a lower shelf out of the way, I can see part of the bottom-most part of the evaporator coil section for visual check on frost buildup. To be honest, I never tried to look at temperature variations in the freezer over a multiple-hour period to see the extent of the defrost cycle spike on various shelves of the freezer size. Perhaps the OP could experiment with placement of the thermometers and also tell us if the spikes in temperature he sees are of short duration and occur in sync with the defrost cycles. I don't remember if the electrical diagram of the unit shows a defrost heater thermostat or not. If there is one, to prevent unnecessary overheating when there is little frost to absorb the heat, I imagine a faulty thermostat could result in overheating the evaporator coils. Also, I don't know how long the defrost cycle lasts, but from listening to sounds when the kitchen is quiet, I don't think it lasts for more than 10-15 minutes out of eight hours. Somewhere there ought to be an appliance forum where the repair folks hang, and the OP can get more definitive answers than whatever I learned late that night when I would much rather have been in bed asleep.
Well, in any event, assuming the OP is properly interpreting his measurements, this is a real problem. Temperature cycling such as he describes will rapidly accelerate the deterioration of food in the freezer.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. --T.S. Eliot
Thanks everyone.Dick, your description makes sense.Perhaps I've contributed to the issue...the freezer doesn't have much in it (we'd rather not full it with food until we know it's working) and what is in there does consist of a few open containers of water that we let freeze to add mass. I'll add some more COVERED containers in there and see what happens.Dan...that is my understanding too...at 20 degree fluctuation is BAD for the food (especially posicles ;o)What I can't find is any documentation stating that. Frigidaire VERBALLY says -6 to 6 is the proper fluctation, but they can't provide anything documented for me to show the reseller/repair place.They did order me a new temp sensor, so perhaps that's an issue, though seeing that the fridge works fine, I'm thinking that won't make much of a difference.Thanks for the links to other sites. I'll check them out!
I have had good luck with this site.
http://www.repairclinic.com