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Hi, My whirlpool side by side freezer is having intermittent cooling issue. Every time I unplug and restart, it works fine for 8-10 hours. I can hear compressor running and all the fans runs fine. Everything freezes nicely inside the freezer. After about 8-10 hours, i don’t hear compressor running and sometimes evaporator fan also shuts down. In most cases, evaporator fan keep blowing air and freezer temp reaches around 30-35F. I see lot of frost inside the freezer. If I leave it, sometimes everything refreezes again. after few hours. I had technician come over yesterday and he cleaned the condenser coils. He didn’t see any frost on the evaporator coils. I left fridge running since yesterday and started to see same issue again today with frost inside freezer and temperature rising. Technician suggested sealed system repair or re-charging refrigerant gas., which are both very costly repairs. Can you please help me understand why freezer is cooling intermittently? Thanks for help, Nitesh
Hi, The compressor and the evaporator fan stopping every 8-10 hours is just the refrigerator going into the auto defrost cycle. When this happens they are turned off and the temperature in the freezer is allowed to rise to 32 F (0 C) to melt any ice on the evaporator unit which drains away to the evaporator pan under the fridge near the compressor. The melting process is sped up by turning on the defrost heater - part #26 Unit parts as you don’t want the food to even begin to thaw. If there is a lot of ice, disconnect the power and use an Ohmmeter check that the heater element is OK (usually 20-50 Ohms, if OK check that power is getting to the element - be safety aware as the heater operates at lethal AC mains voltage) and also that the drain tube is not blocked preventing the meltwater from draining and then refreezing when the compressor is restarted. Pour a small measured amount of water down the drain hole (under the evaporator unit) and check if all of it reaches the evaporator pan underneath. When the temperature in the freezer reaches 32 F(0 C) the Bi- Metal thermostat -part #4 Air Flow parts operates to signal the control board to turn off the heater and to restart the compressor and evaporator fan to drive the temps back down to the set temperatures. If the thermostat is OK then the compressor capacitor -part #13 Unit parts may be faulty. Usually the whole process takes 15-25 minutes and is repeated every 8-10 hours.
