Zanussi Vivo FF fails to hold temps after 1 week interval.

[Society]

Zanussi Vivo ZK87/46EF Product: 928405900

Nearly 10 years old and first played up a few months ago. I eventually discovered the drain pipe had become blocked by plug of ice that the heater wire hadn’t coped with. Haven’t seen that problem since then.

A week ago it stopped cooling either compartment – opening/closing a door re-started it but it cuts out very quickly, there’s no effective cooling (even on superfreeze) and the fan is just moving ambient air. A power-off total thaw seemed to have done the trick but it has just gone again. We’ve lost confidence in it and don’t want to have the neighbours on permanent standby for their freezer capacity.

The pipework doesn’t allow the evaporator shroud to drop by very much (it can be pivoted forward somewhat but I don’t want to kink pipes) so access seems tricky. Within the shroud, I note that the heating wire isn’t as well laid-out as the pattern on the sticky backing suggests should be the case but that may be irrelevant as it’s been fine for nearly a decade. Searching the forum and reading the articles suggests that the defrost sensor/thermistor is among the potential culprits but exactly what that looks like and where it’s to be found is not obvious to me.

I’d appreciate any clues concerning how to keep this kit running as affordable replacements of broadly-equivalent capacity but similar dimensions seem very hard to find.

Thanks.

[Kitten]

Re: Zanussi Vivo FF fails to hold temps after 1 week interva

Hello – I have the same model as you and mine is leaking water inside the freezer so ice builds up – can you tell me where the drainage pipe is so I can try this to see if it helps – thanks

[Society]

Re: Zanussi Vivo FF fails to hold temps after 1 week interva

A power-off, total thaw should clear it – but it could be a long wait for the ice plug that has probably formed in the plastic drain tube to totally melt. This would be the easy approach if you have alternative cooling space available for a day or so (as long as possible to be absolutely sure the plug has completely melted) and I’d recommend it if you’re not totally happy with the following description.

We have now replaced the Vivo due to various other circumstances but, from memory, one could remove the internal rear wall-lining panel (couple of screws) and the shroud at the roof of the freezer compartment and then carefully allow the cooling unit to pivot down (avoiding tension on the heating wire that’d move it from its normal position). The melt-water would normally drain down to the bottom left (as you view it) where it passes through a transparent, flexible, “shotgun” plastic tube about 3″-4″ long that is pushed on to the plastic and just projects through a hole in the rear wall where I suppose the water is guided down to the evaporator tray on top of the compressor.

The lower, smaller barrel of the shotgun carries a small loop of the heating wire that should defrost the tube but which appears to be insufficient on occasion. Once you have ice remaining after a defrost it seems to act as a seed for growing a bigger lump of ice and it eventually becomes a permanent plug. When melt-water can no longer escape via the shotgun tube it simply overflows the “gutter”, runs down the rear wall behind the vertical shroud and onto the floor where it freezes and builds up. Letting the whole assembly move forward should allow you to push the shotgun tube off the rear and deal with the ice plug. It’s not easy to reach but it’s worth ensuring that the loop of heater wire goes right back into the tube as far as possible.

I found the thin sheet of plastic which forms the rear wall-lining to be a pig to refit accurately. It’s all a bit of a fiddle and I imagine that a professional could do it in a trice with confidence whereas we don’t know what liberties we can safely take and what we can get away with. If you’re lucky an expert may reply in this thread and make the task easier for you – but I hope you can follow my amateur, stumbling explanation.

As I say, we no longer have the Vivo and the small saving in running costs from having a modern, energy-efficient FF is, we have found, nowhere near sufficient compensation for having vastly reduced utility and interior space. We found nothing affordable to touch it. Good luck with resuming normal operation.

[Author]

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