The freezer is frozen solid, the milk in the fridge is warm. It is one of the most common fridge calls we take across Wollongong and the Illawarra, and it is nearly always good news, because a fridge that is warm while its freezer is still cold is not a fridge with a dead compressor.
The short version
- Cold is being made but not moving: a fan, a block of ice, a stuck damper or a sensor.
- Listen for the fan hum with the doors shut and look for frost on the freezer’s back wall.
- All four are Standard repairs ($209 plus the part) on top of the $129 diagnostic.
Cold is being made; it is just not getting through. Here is what we check, in the order we check it, what you can look at yourself, and what the repair costs.
Why the freezer can be fine while the fridge warms up
Most household fridges make all their cold in one place, behind the back panel of the freezer. A fan then pushes that cold air through a vent, or a flap called a damper, into the fridge section, and a sensor tells the fridge when it has had enough.
If anything in that path stops, the freezer keeps getting colder and the fridge slowly climbs. So the question is never “why has it stopped cooling”; it is “why has the cold stopped moving”. There are four usual answers.
Is the fan running?
The evaporator fan sits behind the freezer panel and is the one part that moves air between the two sections. When it fails, the symptom is exactly this one: freezer fine, fridge warm, and often a fridge that has gone quiet.
With the doors shut, put your ear to the freezer side. A healthy fridge has a soft, steady hum from the back of the freezer as well as the compressor’s deeper note underneath. Silence up top, with everything else running, points at the fan.
It is a job we can often do in the one visit. One of our customers, Matt, wrote afterwards: “Prompt and friendly service, did a great job replacing our fridge fan. Fridge is as good as new!” That was a fan between the sections, replaced on the visit: a Standard repair with the part on top, and the fridge was cold again before we left.
Is ice blocking the vents?
Modern fridges defrost themselves every few hours: a heater warms the evaporator just enough to melt the frost, a sensor says when, and the water runs away down a drain. When the heater, the sensor or the control that times them fails, the frost never clears.
Over a week or two the evaporator turns into a block of ice, the vents to the fridge close over, and the fan has nothing to push air through even though it is running. The photo above is a Samsung fridge we opened up for exactly this fault: the evaporator iced solid behind the freezer panel, and the ice-maker compartment had to come out to get to it.
The giveaway is frost or a sheet of ice on the back wall of the freezer, sometimes with water pooling in the bottom of the fridge or under the crisper.
Unplugging the fridge for a day will melt it and buy you a week, then it ices up again, because the part that failed is still failed. The repair is the defrost part that stopped working, not a reset, and it is usually a Standard repair.
Is the damper stuck?
The damper is the flap that meters cold air into the fridge, opening and closing on the sensor’s say-so. Stuck closed, the fridge warms up while the freezer carries on.
Stuck open, you get the opposite complaint: lettuce freezing in the crisper and a fridge that will not get above three degrees. Either way it is a part we replace rather than coax, and it sits in the same Standard tier.
Or is it a sensor, a setting or a loaf of bread?
A temperature sensor that reads cold when the fridge is warm tells the fridge to stop sending air, and the fridge obeys. We test the sensor rather than guess at it.
Before you ring, though, look at the simple things: the fridge setting has been knocked to its warmest, a bag or a loaf is sitting hard against the vent at the back of the fridge, or a door is being held off its seal by a shelf. Each of those produces the same warm-fridge, cold-freezer picture and costs nothing to fix.
What it costs to fix
The diagnostic visit is $129 across Wollongong and the close-in Illawarra, or $169 further out (Helensburgh to Woonona in the north, Berry to Nowra in the south). It covers the travel and finding the real fault, and if you go ahead it is the first line of your repair price, so you only pay the balance.
A fan, a defrost heater, a sensor or a damper is nearly always one accessible part, which makes it a Standard repair at $209 plus the part, quoted before we fit it. Those four are worth doing on almost any fridge. See the full price list for every tier.
Two honest exceptions. Some larger fridges have two evaporators, one for each section; when the fridge-side one blocks up, the job gets bigger and often is not worth it against a new machine, and we will say so.
And if the diagnosis turns out to be the compressor or the sealed system, we do not do that work: it runs past a thousand dollars, so we refer you to a refrigeration specialist we trust or tell you straight that a new fridge is the better spend. You pay the diagnostic and nothing else.
What you can safely check
- Listen at the freezer with the doors shut: is there a fan hum as well as the compressor?
- Look at the back wall of the freezer: frost or a sheet of ice means a defrost fault.
- Check the vent at the back of the fridge section is clear and the setting has not been knocked.
- Check both doors close onto their seals with nothing in the way.
- Do not strip the freezer panel or pour hot water on the ice; tell us what you saw and we bring the right parts.
When to call us
Straight away, if the fridge side is above about seven degrees or food is spoiling. A warm fridge gets the earliest slot we have, whichever run it is on. Tell us the brand, what the freezer is doing and whether you can see ice on the back wall, and we arrive with the fan, sensor and defrost parts that fit most machines.
Our fridge repairs Wollongong page has the faults we see most and what to expect on the visit, and the guide to a fridge that is not cooling at all covers the other half of the story.
Most jobs we’re there within the week, often within a couple of days, and we confirm by text, usually within the hour in business hours. Book a repair online any time, or call (02) 4288 2824, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.
Local repair pages: Fridge repairs Shellharbour · Fridge repairs Wollongong · Fridge repairs Dapto.
