Help my refrigerator remember its purpose in life.

September 1, 2008 11:14 AM

Appliance Repair For Dummies Filter: Is there anything we can do to get our fridge to, y'know, refrigerate things?

Our fridge is stuck at 50F. (You may or may not know that 40F is optimal for keeping food, y'know, COLD.) No matter what we do with the little fiddly-knob, this is the coldest we can get it. Our landlord has been contacted, but this seems to be pretty low on his priorities list.

Unfortunately, bugging the landlord is pretty low on 'moonMan's priority list as he has a paper deadline looming this week. I would happily bug the landlord myself, except that he has displayed a lot of "pat-on-the-head oh, you're a cute girl, here just hit this button, pat-pat" dismissive behavior. I'll continue bugging him anyway, but in this aspect of the situation, it's going to take some prodding from 'moonMan for anything to get done.

So. My question. Until we can wrangle our landlord into doing something other than turning the volume up to 11, is there anything we can do to make the fridge COLDER? It's just cold enough to keep milk from spoiling (we go through milk pretty quickly, but I've noticed milk that's been opened for 2 days being just fine), but the ice-cream in the freezer is melting and I would really like to be able to have perishable food in the house without worrying that it's going to be spoiled the next day. (We've had a lot of fancy cheese turn green with alarming speed.)

THNX!

posted by grapefruitmoon to home & garden (9 comments total)

Are the coils at the back clean? They don't radiate heat well when dirty. Is there plenty of space for the heat to dissipate?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:22 AM on September 1, 2008

Google something along the lines of "refrigerator repair" or "refrigerator too warm" and you'll find that many companies selling appliance parts also have parts of their sites dedicated to helping you diagnose problems. Here's one; scroll down to where it says "Cooling is poor."
posted by jon1270 at 11:25 AM on September 1, 2008

Did you try to clean it?
posted by k8t at 11:45 AM on September 1, 2008

Is this a recent thing? I had this problem earlier this year (although fortunately my landlord is pretty awesome and bought us a new one as soon as was possible). Mefites helped narrow it down to a bad defrost cycle. I was able to squeeze another four weeks out of it by defrosting it manually (ie, pulling the plug on the thing and leaving the doors open) for 24 hours. See this previous askme.
posted by fishfucker at 11:59 AM on September 1, 2008

I had this problem with my refrigerator a few months ago. Both the refrigerator and freezer were still cold but not cold enough. It turned out to be the condenser fan motor, which took about 15 minutes to replace once purchased.

If you open your freezer/refrigerator is there the sound of a fan turning on inside the freezer/refrigerator after a few moments? Can you feel air moving within the freezer/refrigerator?
posted by 517 at 12:35 PM on September 1, 2008

Inside of refrigerator is clean as a whistle - especially since we've been removing spoiled food, melted ice cream, etc.

Yes, this is recent. We've lived in this place since May and I'd say we've been having this problem for ~3 wks.

If you open your freezer/refrigerator is there the sound of a fan turning on inside the freezer/refrigerator after a few moments? Can you feel air moving within the freezer/refrigerator?

Distinctly not. I thought there was something funny happening when I opened it, but now that you've mentioned this, it's something funny *not* happening. I don't think I can fix a fan motor by myself, but this is definitely something I can pinpoint to the landlord to say "THIS! FIX THIS!!"
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:50 PM on September 1, 2008

Nth-ing the suggestion to clean the coils, even if it does turn out to be the fan.
posted by metastability at 6:00 PM on September 1, 2008

Any chance there is a air leak around the door or something? In one apartment in my distant past I switched the door on the refrigerator to open in the sensible direction, and it never got very cold after that.
posted by exogenous at 7:57 PM on September 1, 2008

First, clean the coils. They need air circulation to radiate away the heat.

Second, check the door gasket. Close it on a dollar bill in various places. When you pull away the dollar, do you feel tension? If not, you need a new gasket.

Third, do the top and bottom act differently? If the freezer freezes, but the fridge doesn't fridge, you may have an iced-up fan or airway. The solution is to fully defrost the fridge. Get as much moisture out as you can in the process. Check for a clogged drain at the bottom while you're at it.

Then again, you could have any of a failed fan, failed thermostat, failing compressor. The last tends to make a LOT of noise -- call them death throes. Usually a compressor isn't worth replacing.
posted by dhartung at 10:52 PM on September 1, 2008