It is 109 out and the fridge is jut not cooling, the freezer is near/about at zero but the fridge is nearly warm. The fins in the top of the box are only a little bit cool.

Now I put a fan in the back of the refrigerator outside to blow air over the coils but am wondering if the unit is in need of service. It was working well unit I got into the hot spots this last week or so.

Do units need to be recharged or serviced?

Tom

Tom,

I think there is hope if your freezer is at 0. All common refrigerators get their "Cold" from the freezer. In other words, there isn't a separate cooling device for the refrigerator section. It could be a freeze up of ice in the passageway or it is most likely a fan that has stopped working. The fan issue could be a thermostat or the fan itself.

You can do some self diagnostics by removing everything from the freezer and poking around to find the fan and the passageway that brings air down to the refrigerator. It could work after a thorough thaw, but that's just if something is blocked with ice.

Unfortunately, you're "enjoying" one of the symptoms of a dying unit. The fins inside the fridge unit should be very cold (below 32°). An IR thermometer can be helpful in determining the temp of the fins and of items in the section.

Placing the fan outside is helpful. Propane is more effective that electric, so try it on gas.

There is also a possibility that the heat chimney - the pipe on the right side of the outside compartment that the burner exhausts into - is partially blocked.

I'm going to assume you have an RV type refrigerator. These have cooling coils in both the refrig and the freezer section. The fact that the freezer is at 0F says the cooling unit is working. If you mean 0C then it is not.

The cooling fan in the back helps. Also keeping your refrig side in the shady side will also help.

Finally if you have a Dometic the cooling fins in the refrig are screwed onto the cooling coil in the back. These need to be tight. In addition there is heat transfer grease between the fin plate and the cooling coil. If this has gotten hard it will not cool properly.

I just shot a thermal thermometer at the back of my cooling fins and they read from 29F to 34F at their base.

Lastly even though your unit should be colder on gas, my cools better on electricity. If you really want to check out the cooling unit run ac directly to the electric heat units, bypassing the control board. No thermostat as it is running full throttle.

Ok Update

The unit got warm, the freezer compartment went about freezing. So we cleaned up the water. Then I shut off the unit for about 10 min. I checked the coils in the back after having the fan blowing on them and they were noticeably cooler. I then turned the unit back on AC and it got cold over night, the outside night temp also went down to a frigid 90. I switched the unit back to gas and it ran fine all day as the temp went up to 112.

I now put it back onto AC and it seems fine again. So what must have happened is the outside temp got too high and there was no air movement over the coils and something got blocked or a bubble got formed, when I gave it some time off it came back to work with a good attitude. I checked and I don't have a fan in the back of the fridge, nor at the top of the exhaust. Next year when I come back I will get one of the DC/thermo fans installed. Or not travel to such hot places.......

Thanks for the input.

The unit may just die anyway it is over 13 years old anyway.

Tom

I wonder if a thermostat froze over with the high humidity? Glad you're back in the cool though.

hey Cory, gotta stop thinking like a floridian. He is in AZ. Humidity will be running 10-20 percent unlike the 80-90 percent you live with.

Sorry just couldn't help yanking the chain a little.

I just can't keep track of him, he's all over the place.

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Carter:
hey Cory, gotta stop thinking like a floridian. He is in AZ. Humidity will be running 10-20 percent unlike the 80-90 percent you live with.

I don't know the numbers, but during the monsoon season, Phoenix has high humidity. This morning, an hour north of phoenix, the nearby mountains looked hazy from the humidity.

Throw that thing away before it burns down your Beautiful Barth...If it is a 6 or 8 cu ft unit Whirlpool makes a model that is 110 volt and with minor to no cabinet work will fit right in. It is available in Black, White and Stainless. If you do not have an inverter, run your GenSet for about thirty minutes every 6 hours and it will stay plenty cold, best thing is that they are only about $500 @ Lowes. We have done a ton of these conversions away from the self-igniting RV Refers.

quote:

Originally posted by billyt53:
Throw that thing away before it burns down your Beautiful Barth...If it is a 6 or 8 cu ft unit Whirlpool makes a model that is 110 volt and with minor to no cabinet work will fit right in. It is available in Black, White and Stainless. If you do not have an inverter, run your GenSet for about thirty minutes every 6 hours and it will stay plenty cold, best thing is that they are only about $500 @ Lowes. We have done a ton of these conversions away from the self-igniting RV Refers.

You're pushing me closer.........

My electric only fridge ran 3 days on inverter power this past weekend. I only ran my generator for about an hour and a half on day 3 to charge it up again.

Before I started my generator, the inverter was showing 12.2 volts on the digital display, which is about a 50% state of charge for the batteries.




What this chart is telling you, that anything less than 11.90 volts is considered a fully discharged battery. Hard to imaging huh?

Those voltage charts are for a battery that has been sitting disconnected for a number of hours. the Trojan site has it exactly.

A battery's voltage is a reflection of its present load and the load in the few hours before your reading.

Most accurate is a hydrometer, as it will read accurately without a long wait time.

I have found it convenient to disconnect in the morning, before the sun hits the solar panels, take the dog for an hour's walk, and read the voltmeter. Then I add a tenth to the volt reading and get an accurate reading. The same if I let it sit for hours and hours.

Now, understand, this is only for my previous situation of two GC batteries, and only the fridge and my CPAP running overnight. Your mileage may vary, but with this method, you can arrive at a value that is good for your usage.

Bill N.Y., thanks for posting that. I have been hoping I was not going to be far off with my suggestion to use the 110V fridge and an inverter. Seems like your experience parallels mine. whew!