I blame myself, I was being lazy. I have a side by side Kenmore Fridge, it is relatively new it was bought in 05. I stuff the freezer part the night before and the door didn't close good. I closed it up after cleaning up a lot of water and made sure it closed. The freezer seems to be working fine now, but the fridge part isn't as cold anymore the juice is nowhere near as cold as it used to be but it is cool enough for the butter to stay solid. Also now the whole fridge is audibly humming constantly whereas before it was every once in a while. What can I do?
The most likely problem is ice buildup on the freezer coils themselves. Ice acts as an insulator (O deg C)and the cold in the coils (minus 10 deg C?) never gets to be (fan) blown to the rest of your freezer. When that happened to my fridge I popped out the freezer panels and there it was a solid wall of ice around the bottom four coils that had built up over the years. It took six hours to melt all that ice. Don't try to chip the ice or apply heat to the coils. It might damage the coils or cook the refrigerant.
If you look at the freezer panels the front lip slides under the front bezel. The front floor panel corner is held down by a metal stud on either side. Undo the back panel screws and remove the back panel. Push the side panels in so that the studs will move far back enough for the floor panel to come off.
Since this is the first time it happened to you perhaps you can get away with defrosting the fridge. Remove all the fridge contents. Switch off the fridge and leave the door open overnight and maybe longer to melt the frosted on ice. That worked for me in many earlier "won't cool the fridge compartment" problems. Eventually the ice buildup was too thick. I was on the point of dumping my 30 year old fridge. Since I was resigned to paying for a replacement I took apart those panels and it wouldn't have mattered if I screwed up. I didn't and my fridge works as good as new now.
If it is in fact the coil frozen, you also have to find the reason and fix that. Chances are the defrost cycle is messed up or the evaporator fan is not blowing properly.
Hot air hair dryer works nicely. Not hot enough to do much damage, but defrosts a bit faster than sit and wait. There is a defrost heater circuit that should melt the ice off, every couple hours.
Just went through that with my side-by-side. The defrost heater wasn't working, Technician put in a new one. Even having he had defrosted all the visible ice first it still took 2 days before I didn't find a puddle of water on the floor in the mornings as the heater was clearing out the hidden ice. Replacement part wasn't all that expensive but the service call was of course. Happens again, I will know how to fix it myself.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.