Well, the Bauknecht/Whirlpool repair technician was just here and the verdict he delivered after looking at the fridge for about 15 seconds was devastating. This fridge has officially bit the dust. Because we have two compressors in the bottom, the freezer will continue to run, probably for another 10 years or more…but there is absolutely no hope for the fridge part of the unit. I think the problem may be the evaporator coils but he didn’t say specifically (or I didn’t catch the technical word in German). He did ask if we’d had a block of ice stuck to the back of the fridge for a while…which we did. Now because the fridge is so warm it’s just a bit of condensation. It was there for many months…if not a year or more. I am fairly certain it was doing this already in our old rental house. When he pushed on the back of the fridge it gave way and apparently it’s not supposed to do that. It flexes back and forth and whatever part (or fluid?) is behind there should be filling the space. He said that the device behind the wall of the fridge would still attempt to cool the fridge but the cool air is not actually circulating around the fridge, hence the build up of ice. The coolant slowly begins to leak out of the fridge (you could actually hear it every now and then which was a concern of mine) and will continue to do so until there is nothing left. It’s a very slow process and if the coolant was full when this started, it could take quite a while. But even if you put more coolant in, you will never be able to fix the machine, only prolong buying a new one. And once the fridge is warm, getting it back down to a suitable temperature is dang near impossible.
Now I know what I’m saying here is probably totally useless information for anyone who comes across this post and wonders what is happening to their fridge…and I’m sorry. But let me advise you of this if you have found this post for such a reason – call someone and be prepared to buy a new refrigerator. At least if they should be able to repair the machine, you’ll be pleasantly surprised 😉
What I failed to ask the repair guy was why this might have happened, so now I may never know. I do wonder whether our movers had anything to do with it when they moved the unit about two years ago…but nothing can be proved now and it was moved again 6 months ago to this house so what can we do except start looking for a replacement. I did ask him if we should notice a build up in a new fridge, would it make a difference if we called sooner and he said no. So at least we don’t have to beat ourselves up thinking we could have prevented this somehow if we had called months ago…
So now the search begins for a new fridge. I’m not exactly thrilled that we will have to make this purchase but we did go to the trouble of having a water connection put in where the fridge sits because we knew we’d want to get a side-by-side with ice cube maker and water spout at some point…so at least we’ll get to use that now. Bauknecht will send us a price quote on a few of their side-by-side machines for us to use as a comparison price to everything else we find. Supposedly they give a few hundred euros discount to retail prices but since they are usually pretty pricey to begin with, we will probably still end up with something like a Daewoo. When we were researching these about a year ago, we found that Samsung/LG fridges don’t have much insulation in the walls so I’m in inclined to stay away from them. Plus the storage bins in the doors are generally not very deep which ends up being a bit useless in the end. Tomorrow I will probably go visit a few stores and see what we can get…
