Freezer is cold but food section is warm!

A refrigerator is the most hard working home appliance. It works hard to keep your food and beverage fresh. There are days when your industrious refrigerator goes out of order and faces problems. One such common problem with your refrigerator is that its freezer is cold but food section is warm.

The several possible reasons behind this problem are:

Frosted Evaporator Coils due to faulty defrost heater

If the freezer is cold but the food section is warm, there are chances that the evaporator coils are frosted over. Every refrigerator has a set of cooling coils called the evaporator coils.

A small fan is mounted near these coils. This fan draws air over the evaporator coils and circulates the cool air throughout the food section. This cool air keeps the fresh food section cool. But during the cooling cycle, frost or ice gets accumulated on the evaporator coils. This accumulated frost or ice is melted by the defrost heater assembly. If the defrost heater assembly ( i.e. the defrost heater, defrost thermostat or defrost timer) goes bad, the frost deposited over the coils does not melt and eventually no air  travels through the coils to provide cooling to the food section.

Faulty Evaporator Fan Motor

Every refrigerator has a set of coils called the evaporator coils.  These are the coils that get cold. A small fan is mounted near these coils. This fan draws air over the evaporator coils and circulate the cool air throughout the food section. If the fan motor fails, fan stops working. If fan does not work, there is no air to travel through the coils and eventually there is no cooling in the food section.

Defective temperature sensors or thermistor

If the freezer is cold and the food section is warm, the thermistor might be defective. A thermistor is a sensor ( a small capsule like device) that monitors the air temperature inside the refrigerator. The thermistor is connected to the control board. The control board uses the information shared (air temperature signals) by thermistor to start and stop the compressor and fan circuit. If the thermistor or sensor becomes defective it may incorrectly signal the control board to stop the compressor and fan. This way the cooling cycle will be interrupted and will result in a warmer food section.

Damaged control board

As explained above, control board has a very important part to play in the cooling cycle. So if the control broad goes bad, compressor and fan circuit will not turn on and cooling will not start.

Any of the above can be the reason of a warm food section of your refrigerator. So if you are  facing the problem of refrigerator  food section not cooling, immediately make a case of refrigerator repair with Mr.Right.