This Sunday I returned from a nine-day camping trip to find a totally dead refrigerator. In fact, the inside of the refrigerator was much warmer than the house since I’d turned the heat way down. Apparently the fans and other parts heat things up when the compressor stops cooling. Oh joy.
It must have died several days before because everything was completely thawed and stinky and all the food was a total loss. The good news? It was a terrific opportunity to clean the fridge and freezer since it wasn’t cold and full of food 😉 Trying to look on the bright side here… Couldn’t face the sadness of throwing all that food out Sunday night so Monday morning I emptied both the refrigerator and freezer and thoroughly cleaned both sides.
The repair
I did a lot of research online Sunday night and couldn’t find good information on how to figure out what was wrong. I lucked out and was able to get a repair person out Monday afternoon — no small feat in the rural community I live in.
The guy quickly diagnosed it was the run capacitor and relay for the compressor, told me the repair would be $229 ($129 for parts and $100 for labor), and went out to his truck to get the replacement part. When I saw the part number on the capacitor I looked up it up on the internet. The part shown at left was $11.24 on Amazon. $229 vs. $12??? It was a tough call for me, but since I didn’t know much about compressors and had struck out finding information the night before I decided to let him do the work and have a functional refrigerator immediately. He knocked the price down to $200 when he did the bill. By the way — if I would have decided to do the repair myself I would have owed a $75 service call charge.
Further research
Since there were two parts involved I tracked down the other one on Appliance Parts Pros. This parts sells for $33.30 so the total parts to do it myself would have been $44.54. $44.54 vs. the $100 final price isn’t quite as bad. $100 to have the man drive way out to my house and spend 45 minutes here is fairly reasonable. The net difference would have been $119.54 with the service call vs. his repair of $200. I can live with that.
Next time
If the same thing happened again and I was home and stood a chance of saving all the food if the refrigerator could be repaired quickly I probably would have someone come to the house again and cough up another $200. Â That said — if all the food was ruined and I wasn’t in a huge rush I would order the parts and do the repair myself — now that I know what needs to be done.
Could there be a next time? The repairman said the parts he replaced were probably fried by a power surge and strongly suggested I get an appliance surge protector to prevent it from happening again. I bought one that afternoon.
See next post Surge protection for appliances – do it now! for information on surge protection.
I found this at http://appliance911seabreeze.com/Â to help next time:
HOW TO CHECK FOR A BURNED OUT COMPRESSOR
Unplug the refrigerator and remove the back panel that covers the compressor. There should be 3 wires going inside the cover of the compressor. Mark all 3 and mark their location so if compressor is OK you can put them back in same order. The plastic cover may snap on and you may need to squeeze the sides to unlock the cover and sometimes there is a metal clip holding the cover in place. Remove the cover. May look hard but it’s simple. There will be three connections under the cover and 2 will go through the start relay. Unplug them leaving the three prongs exposed. They may be marked R =Run, S=Start and C=Common. Set your meter on continuity and then begin by testing 2 at a time until you have checked S to R and R to C an C to S and S to R again. You should get a reading all the way around. If no reading between any of the pairs as you go around you should get no reading between any two the compressor has an open winding and is defective. Then if it passes that test then touch one probe to R and the other to the copper pipes or clean metal on outside of compressor, then S to metal outside and C to metal outside. If you get a reading this way even just a little. The compressor is a burnout.
