Freezer Problem

abwsco

I've got a chest freezer which doesn't seem to be working properly. There's a bit of ice inside it and bread etc is cold but I've had to throw out chicken etc which had defrosted. Power is working OK to it. The freezer is an outbuilding. Does it sound like it's a gonna as I would imagine it's dear to repair. Thanks

trops

Might be worth getting an estimate incase it is just the thermostat

Aubs

People have the misconception that if a freezer (and to a lesser extent a fridge) is in a cold room, like an out building, that they will work just as well, or even keep everything colder... This is not right (I think!!)

Fridges and freezers keep things inside cold by warming themselves and the outside. If the outside is extremely cold, as it has been over the last few days, the freezer has to work overtime to *try* and cool the inside. Consider taking the freezer inside and see if it works, my guess is that it might!

Don't take this as gospel, I might be wrong!

Aubs

Aubs

abwsco,

Any response to what happened?

Your advice could be worth lot£ for other money savers

Aubs

kwatt

You are correct Aubs, keeping refrigeration in cold outbuildings which invariably also get too hot in summer, is a very bad idea generally.

If you look on the label there should be a climate class shown and I rote an article about this some time ago which you can find here that should explain all.

Basically domestic refrigeration products are not designed to be used in this way, period.

As to the original question, I'd need to know how old it was but it does sound like a weak compressor or possibly a severe insulation failure and, either way, it's probably not worth fixing if it's possible. Insulation failures, more often than not caused by keeping the unit in an unsuitable climate (;)) are not repairable pretty much, you can try it but there's less than a 50% chance of success and it's not cheap to do.

Hope that helps.

K.

Equinut

I have a frost-free fridge freezer and just recently discovered a similar problem. The fridge compartment was working fine but I suddenly noticed food beginning to defrost in the freezer compartment.

Doing some investigating, the freezer was still 'cold' but not enough to freeze the food.

I am defrosting it for 24 hours to see if it was just a build-up of ice on the fins which help the flow of air (the frost free functionality!).

Other places which could be possible causes might be to look might be the condenser or actual thermostat. Basic test is you ought to try defrosting it for 24 hrs and see if switching it back on, it resumes its normal freezing temperature. When was the last time you defrosted it? They need that periodically.

Equinut

kwatt

Hi Equint,

In a cold environment that will happen in a great many cases with fridge freezers and I can even tell you why.

Basically (excuse the tinge of bitterness here) people want cheap junk appliances for as little money as possible. Manufacturers oblige people and are perfectly happy with that as the appliances are scrap sooner, so they sell more. Retailers aren't exactly crying in their soup about it either.

One mammoth saving on a fridge freezer is to use one compressor and not two as was the case with older machines, more expensive of course but lasted longer as well for the most part. This means one thermostat in effect, the temperature is all controlled through the fridge only as there's only the one compressor to pump the gas around.

So when the ambient temperature drops below the cut-in point for the thermostat the compressor never switches on as the thermostat is telling it that it doesn't have to do so. However, of course as we all know, that's not cold enough for the freezer to keep food frozen.

This is why a modern fridge freezer in any environment where the temperature drops below about 10-15C is a total no-no.

On your own machine I'd need a lot more info, like what it is at the very least, to offer any pointers if the above doesn't apply.

Hope it helps.

K.

abwsco

Aubs wrote: »

abwsco,

Any response to what happened?

Your advice could be worth lot£ for other money savers

Aubs

Oops, sorry I forgot to do an update. The freezer went to the tip as a friend happened to be getting rid of a spare working chest freezer they had. The outbuilding is the only place we can fit an extra freezer in, but this year it hasn't been very cold round here. We've only had a frost once. I know it's not ideal. Think the original freezer was 5 years old but it was a cheapy.