Fridge repair on the Costa Blanca

The fridge that stopped cooling: action protocol

The fridge is probably the appliance whose failure generates the most urgency. When it stops cooling, you have 24-36 hours before food starts going off in chain: yoghurts, cheese, deli meat, fresh fish, leftovers. For a family with a full shop done, the food loss can exceed the repair cost if you don’t act fast.

The first thing we recommend to a client calling because their fridge doesn’t cool is basic checks before the technician arrives. Verify the fridge has power (sometimes the problem is just a tripped MCB on the board). Check the thermostat hasn’t been changed by an accidentally pressed button. Verify the rear ventilation grille isn’t blocked (sometimes someone pushes the fridge against the wall and blocks the condenser airflow, overheating the motor and shutting the fridge off as protection). If those checks don’t fix it, it’s a real fault that needs a technician.

Most frequent faults

A faulty thermostat is the most common cause. The thermostat is the sensor that reads internal temperature and tells the motor when to start and stop. When it fails, it may keep the fridge off all the time (no cooling) or on all the time (overcools and freezes everything, including lettuce and veg). Thermostat replacement is a 60-90 minute job per unit.

The electronic temperature probe is the modern version of the mechanical thermostat. In display-and-digital-control fridges, the probe sends signal to the control board that decides when to start the motor. Replacement is slightly pricier than a mechanical thermostat but the operation is similar.

The freezer fan (in no-frost fridges that distribute cold air from the freezer to the fridge zone) can stop and leave the fridge zone without cooling even though the freezer keeps working fine. That’s the cause when a client tells us freezer cold but fridge not. Fan replacement: 60 minutes.

Refrigerant gas leak is the most serious fault. The gas (R600a or R134a on older models) runs in a closed circuit and shouldn’t leak. With a microleak, the fridge progressively loses efficiency until it stops cooling. Repair requires locating the leak, fixing it and recharging the gas. A 3-4 hour operation only worth doing on relatively new premium fridges.

American-style and special fridges

American-style double-door fridges with ice and water dispenser have specific faults that don’t happen on standard fridges. The dispenser water inlet can drip, the automatic ice system can jam, the door electronics (touchscreen, digital control) can fail. We work with all those brands (Samsung, LG, Whirlpool, Beko) but specific parts may need a 5-15 day order by brand and model.