Question For A Fridge Expert

[RobB]

We awoke to soft butter and stinky milk this morning, so our kitchen fridge is either dead or seriously ill. Thankfully I am about to start kegging, so all our food is now in a chest freezer with tempmate ("You see Darling, it's paid for itself already......").

Before I get someone out to start tut-tutting and writing expensive numbers on a quotation, I was hoping to get an idea of what might be wrong.

The main symptom was a long, slow demise. We have been turning the thermostat to colder and colder settings over the last couple of months, but we thought that this was just due to usual Christmas overcrowding. Is this slow decline a classic symptom of compressor/gas/thermostat problems, or could it be anything?

Cheers,

Rob.

 

[barls]

sounds like a slow leak somewhere mate. may be easy to fix but most likely not.

 

[bigholty]

As mentioned above, sounds like a slow leak. A re-gas would fix it for a while, but I understand fridge techs are required to find and repair the leak before they can re-gas. I think this is for environmental reasons, so there is not just refrigerant getting consumed and leaked into the atmoshphere all the time. I had a chest freezer that had a similar demise and the guy that came around didn't even look at it. He told me he couldn't just regas it without fixing it, and this would cost a motza, as the leak could have been anywhere, including buried somewhere inside the foam sandwiched between the inside and outside cabinets.

 

[DU99]

some of the older fridges used a different gas to what they are used today..the tech will have to vac out the old gas repair the leak and refill with a new gas..might be cheaper to look on e*ay or gumtree for a cheap replacement

 

[mika]

So is it not cooling at all ?
If the cold plate in the back of the fridge is cold all the way round (just not cold enough) it's possible that a simple thermostat will fix it. If it's cold at the start of the cold plate and warm at the end it'll generally indicate a lack of gas in which case, quokka/gumtree/ebay are your friends.

 

[Brown_hound]

"You see Darling, it's paid for itself already......"

LMAO... Classic.

 

[RobB]

Thanks for the replies.

So is it not cooling at all ?
If the cold plate in the back of the fridge is cold all the way round (just not cold enough) it's possible that a simple thermostat will fix it. If it's cold at the start of the cold plate and warm at the end it'll generally indicate a lack of gas in which case, quokka/gumtree/ebay are your friends.

Extreme ignorance alert: what does a cold plate look like? The inside of my fridge is a continuous shell of white plastic. Should I be feeling the back wall of the fridge, or is it an external part?

 

[michael_aussie]

Thanks for the replies.



Extreme ignorance alert: what does a cold plate look like? The inside of my fridge is a continuous shell of white plastic. Should I be feeling the back wall of the fridge, or is it an external part?

Older fridges had an exposed "cold plate".
Newer fridges have the cold plate hidden so how you work out if it is "1/2" working is beyond me..... I'll watch this thread and see if I learn something.