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Freezer Questions

It cools poorly or it’s all iced up

If your freezer cools but doesn’t get cold enough, it may have a problem in one of several areas.

Freezers should self-defrost three to four times in 24 hours. But if a component in the self-defrosting system fails, the freezer continues to try to cool, instead. Eventually, so much frost builds up on the evaporator coils that the circulating fan can’t draw air over the coils. There’s still some cooling because the coils are frozen. But with no air flow over the coils, the cooling is quite limited and the freezer isn’t as cold as it needs to be.

It’s noisy

Noise can come from these areas:

The inside of the freezer

Your self-defrosting freezer uses a circulating fan to move the air throughout the freezer. It runs whenever the freezer is cooling and the door is closed. The fan is located in the freezer section, as follows:

  • If the freezer is on the top, the fan is on the back wall, either near the top or bottom, in the center of the freezer.
  • If the freezer is on the bottom, the fan is on the back wall, near the top of the freezer.
  • If the freezer is on the left, the fan is on the back wall, either half way up or near the top.

Over time, the fan may become noisy–chirping, squealing, or even groaning. To determine whether the fan is causing the noise, open the freezer door and hold in the door switch. If the noise is louder when the door is open, the evaporator fan motor is the noisemaker. These motors can’t be serviced. You need to replace it.

The outside back of the freezer

This area has one component–or two, if it’s a self-defrosting freezer:

  • The compressor is a black, football-sized case with no apparent moving parts on the outside of the freezer at the back near the bottom. It has black or copper-colored tubes and various colored wires attached to it. If the compressor is noisy, there’s probably no repair that will reduce the noise. You need to replace it, which can be quite costly.
  • The condenser fan, if it’s noisy, may have lint or debris on its fan blades that’s causing the noise. Try cleaning the fan blade. If that doesn’t work, you need to replace the fan.

The bottom of the freezer

Noises here are almost always actually coming from the back of the freezer, see the “The outside back of the freezer” section, above.