Every year from about Thanksgiving the calls start. The second refrigerator in the garage has gone odd. The fridge section is cold. The freezer has gone soft. Nobody touched anything. It is almost never a repair.
Climate class, which nobody reads
Most refrigerators carry a rating specifying the ambient range they were designed to operate in, and plenty of them stop at around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. An unheated Chicago garage is a long way below that from December through March.
Why it is the freezer that suffers
On a single-evaporator machine the thermostat deciding when to run the compressor sits in the fresh food compartment. With the garage at 38 degrees that compartment is already cold enough, so the thermostat is satisfied and the compressor never starts. But the freezer depends on that same compressor. It gets no run at all, and it slowly thaws.
So the classic January error is backwards from what people expect: the fridge is cold and the freezer is soft. Nothing has failed. The control is doing exactly what it was designed to do, in a room it was never designed for.
Two things that work
- Heat the space, even slightly. Hold an insulated garage above 60 and the problem disappears.
- Buy a garage-rated unit. They exist, they carry a heater or a second sensor for exactly this, and they are the right answer when the garage cannot be heated.
What does not work is the kit sold online to warm the thermostat. It does get the compressor running, which is the point, and it runs it in a temperature it was never built for, which is the cost. We do not recommend them and we will say why.
When it is real
If the freezer stays soft once the garage warms up in April, something has genuinely gone. Then it is worth a look, and it is usually a defrost part rather than the compressor everybody fears.
Call 847-941-0334.
