Passive Refrigerator Repair

Yesterday evening my husband noticed the stuff in the refrigerator felt a little warm. Personally, being hot and sweaty, I couldn't tell, so I stuck a thermometer on one of the shelves and sure enough it read 60. We check the freezer. Everything in there seemed fine and frozen. There was no icy build up like that which happens when the door is left open... We also noticed the usual refrigerator hum, suggesting all was well within its white walls.

Puzzled, we removed the contents into coolers, then turned to the internet of help. Being very unfamiliar with refrigerators beyond the fact that, on a good day, they keep food cold I searched YAHOO by symptom: refrigerator repair freezer cold refrigerator warm. Not my finest descriptive writing, but the best I could come up with at the time. Still the results poured in.

The first suggestion I took and applied was to raise the temperature of the freezer. Stating that would lower the temperature in the refrigerator. Not in this case.

Next was the idea that we had a frozen coil. The poster said he had removed the inside panel, used a hair dryer to defrost the coil, then he replaced his thermostat (How he knew that was the culprit, I have no idea.), put the box back together and voila -- life was good in under 15 minutes.

My husband took off one of the panels on our unit and found no evidence of coils, frozen or otherwise. I had visions of our kitchen looking like we were conducting a post mortem on the appliance, so I suggested that we let the whole thing thaw. That if our problems were rooted in an iced over any part somewhere inside our white box, letting it warm, (surrounded by beach towels), would be one way to solve the problem. Then, if after thawing we were no further ahead, it would be out of our hands anyway.

Well it worked. After about an hour, (Truly I wasn't watching the clock -- instead I was practicing on the old banjo.) we had an icy cold beach towels, suggesting something had been iced over somewhere. Still, I wanted to make sure it was good and thawed so taking advantage of a completely empty unit-- I cleaned it.

Afterwards, I plugged it in. Humming along as usual, it cooled the refrigerator and freezer just fine. Proving the adage, sometimes doing nothing is the same as doing something.