The milk had frozen into a solid, white block of ice. You could have knocked someone out with it! The strawberries were as hard as golf balls and only useful for a strawberry milkshake maybe. This was not good! A refrigerator is not supposed to freeze the food, just chill it suitably so it doesn’t spoil, you know the drill …
I had gotten this fancy, used side-by-side fridge from a friend who was clearing out his house and trying to get a few bucks for the appliances before selling the house. I thought the fridge would be a decent upgrade from the 80s model that had been in the rental apartment forever and so I took it. For a number of months now I had noticed that food was freezing in the fridge, but it wasn’t a big deal. Renters were never staying more than a few days and in that time it didn’t create issues. It took a few days of not opening the fridge for the food to freeze solid. But now I had a problem. I had decided to rent the apartment for the whole winter season and the renters were arriving in less than a week. They’d be coming and going for the whole winter and sometimes they would not be back for a week or two. Of course, they’d be leaving food in the fridge, which meant they’d come back to a fridge full of frozen food … not good! So, finally, in the 11th hour, of course, I called my trusted appliance repair guy, Brian. He would fix it! Done! Brian had helped me with several appliance-related issues before and in fact, he had worked his magic to resolve a water leak in this fridge and so I was confident a call to him would take care of the matter.
Brian arrived and took a look. To my surprise, he seemed to think this fancy GE fridge was out of his league. But alas, he did not leave me hanging. ‘Call the local GE experts’, he suggested and gave me their contact information. I duly called the experts, who agreed to come and take a look.
At the appointed time for the visit of these so-called experts, I was not able to be at the apartment so Matt filled in for me and later gave me a summary of the visit. A team of two experts had come, carried out an expert assessment of the fridge, and then relayed to Matt their expert opinion, which went something like this: ‘Na, this fridge is fine, it’s supposed to work like this. These fridges are designed to be opened and closed many times a day and if they don’t get opened and closed they get too cold. I mean, we could replace the circuit board, but that probably wouldn’t fix anything and then you’d have spent a lot of money for nothing.’ To my surprise, they were not even trying to sell us a new fridge. I was a little taken aback by this assessment, but sure, these guys were the experts and I was not in the habit of questioning the expert opinion of an expert… I also really did not want to spend $1000 on a new fridge. I didn’t know what to do.
That night, Matt and I sat at the dinner table with our in-laws, John and Rosa, and their son, Carlos, who was visiting for the holidays. We recounted the story of our attempts to have the refrigerator fixed. Now, Carlos doesn’t mince his words and when he hears BS he calls it, and that is what he did. He was convinced that the fridge is not ‘supposed’ to freeze the food and that these so-called experts were plain lazy or ignorant. My gut had nudged me in that direction, but I hadn’t been bold enough to trust it.
Lesson 1: When your gut tells you it’s BS there’s a pretty good chance it is. At the very least trust your gut enough to get another opinion. Not all 'experts' deserve the title!
Emboldened and encouraged by the possibility that the fridge could still be fixed and that no-one was going to help me do it, I rolled up my sleeves and set out, with the trusted internet for help, to determine what was going on with this fridge. Lo and behold, it didn’t take a lot of internet searching to learn that this was not the first time this particular model of fridge had had a food-freezing-issue.
Lesson 2: When you have a problem and are in need of a solution, there is a really good chance, someone has had the same problem before and may have a solution for you. You are not alone!
A little more digging revealed several options of what might be wrong, but a most likely culprit seemed to stand out. The way a lot of these fridge-freezer combo appliances work is that they cool the air in the freezer and then a fan directs the air into the fridge compartment to cool that down as well. When the fridge is cool enough the fan will stop and/or a flap will close to stop the airflow into the fridge. From the information, I had gathered, the fan or the flap was probably broken. A YouTube video gave me a few pointers on how to disassemble the fridge, extract the broken piece, and replace it. With this new knowledge, I packed a few tools and headed up to the house the next morning to take the fridge apart. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes to extract the piece and discover that indeed, the flap was broken and no longer closed as it was supposed to. 10 minutes later I had ordered a new part online which would arrive a few days later and the fridge would be fixed in time for the arrival of the renters. Score!
Lesson 3: Don’t be intimidated by a fridge or whatever else might be giving you trouble, it might not be as complex as you think, or at the very least, give it a shot! Roll up your sleeves and try to figure it out, there’s a good chance you can do it!
Matt stopped in on me at one point during my fridge-fixing project and I showed him my progress. He took it upon himself to find a tube of superglue and glued the flap back together so it might work. I reinstalled the part into the fridge, and hey presto, the fridge worked again, with the superglued piece, for several years. No frozen food!! Eventually, it broke again and I replaced it with the spare part I had ordered and stored in the attic since at the time I ordered it I had not needed it.
After I received the bill for the service call from the experts, I wrote them a long letter explaining what had happened and how I managed to fix the fridge myself and why I was not going to pay the $120 for the service call. They didn’t argue with me.
I have over the years replaced pumps in dishwashers, fans in more than one refrigerator, I have helped to fix a washing machine and a dryer and resolved an issue or two with a stovetop. I briefly considered a career in appliance repair 😂. Clearly, that didn’t happen, but I’ll keep it in my back pocket, just in case!
Image: Partially disassembled fridge - December 2014