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Hope to get some input on this issue from someone. Fridge/Freezer is about 5 years old. The fridge compartment is cool but not cold, maybe approx 10 degrees. Dairy products go off quickly. When the unit was new, I can remember ice beads on the wet wall, but haven’t seen these for a long time. The freezer compartment works fine.
The compressor and the freezer fan runs and starts and stops as normal. Temperature control is at maximum setting of 5.
The right side and top side of the wet wall is cooler than the left with condensation beads of water. The middle and bottom sections are not cold at all.
The bottom of the fridge compartment gets pools of water under the salad trays, but this is not due to the overspill due to a blocked drainage tube from the wet wall. This area is quite cold at the bottom due to the cold coming through from the top of the freezer compartment where the evaporator coils are situated.
I can’t see how the cold air from the freezer section gets to the wet wall, assuming that it does, having removed the covers to the fan and evaporator coils. Maybe there is a secondary set of evaporator coils behind the wet wall — I don’t know as the online exploded view doesn’t show anything
Any help would be much appreciated before I call Hotpoint service.
Kind regards
From what I can see of it, it’s a frost free with a wet wall fridge and from the description I’d suspect that the compressor was pumping weak as, the freezer will get first then the fridge but it sounds like it’s not reaching there.
All too likely the freezer won’t be hitting a mean temp of -18˚C either if you were to test it.
K.
Thanks for the reply. The output pipe from the compressor is hot, as expected. This pipe then disappears up inside the back of the appliance, before it comes back out again into the exterior cooling radiator at which point it is warm. At the other end of the cooling radiator, it is room temperature. The radiator is dust free.
If the freezer wasn’t at -18, would the compressor keep running all the time ?
From the attached photo, I am not sure what the small bulbous device is at the end of the black pipe, which is at the end of the radiator coil. The other copper pipe coming back from internally back to the compressor is quite cold.
I guess I need to get a fridge/freezer thermometer to check the temperatures.
The only way to know what’s going on is to test the temps and if required break the gas system and check that but, that’s you into specialist stuff that is not DIY-able.
K.
Thanks for your input in this. I guess I need to get Hotpoint in to take a look at it, unless anyone else can provide any additional input. Was just wondering if there was any testing I could do prior to calling them in, hence the post.
Update – Purchased a fridge / freezer thermometer. Fridge temperature is 14 degrees !!, freezer is -25 degrees.
Maybe, and as you say, it is all buried inside the appliance. I have booked a service call for Thursday. Will update this post afterwards so that other people might benefit from it. Thanks !
Guy from Hotpoint tipped up this morning. They need to send in a “gas” (refrigerant) man as he’s not trained on that area ! He ordered a new compressor as the current one is hot while it was running. Maybe his training should tell him that these do run hot as a result of what they do
. He thought there might be a “blockage” in the line to the wet wall coils. I’m not sure how a blockage can occur on a closed system after it has been running this long, but there you go. Maybe I’m missing something….No, sounds like he really doesn’t know refrigeration. Seeing that from people that are not trained in refrigeration or understand it is pretty commonplace.
K.
Yes, I think you are correct. Bit like anything these days, you start off at Level 1 support and then move up the ladder over time. Just very frustrating for the customer.
I didn’t think it was going to bode well when he walked through the door armed with just a drill-type powered screwdriver and a laptop in a hard case.
Will update as we move along
Final update. A properly trained engineer came out and diagnosed it as a blockage in the cooling system. Asked him what can cause this in a closed system, and he said the oil from the compressor can seep out over time into the drier and restrict the flow. He unblocked it, replaced the drier, re-gassed the system, and all working now !
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