by Tricia
If you happen to be driving down the street and see a cooler outside of a house sitting in the snow…you’ll know where we live. Mr. Refrigerator decided to pull a little “joke” on us today and seek out some warmer temps. Thankfully, Mr. Freezer didn’t play along and he’s still as cold as ever.
I’m pretty sure it’s not a joke, though. Something is definitely wrong with our fridge. It’s a bummer and it’s inconvenient but there is a silver lining. When I think about it…there are many of them.
1.) It’s still winter where I live and the temps are cold. We can put it food outside to keep the food from spoiling.
2.) We don’t have much in our fridge at any given time so it all fit in a single cooler.
3.) Our fridge was purchased about 3 years ago so mechanical portions of it are still under warranty.
4.) If for some reason the warranty does not cover the repair and we have to get a new fridge, we have an emergency fund. There will be no charging on the credit cards!
Over the next few days I will search and ask around to see if I can at least pinpoint the problem with our fridge. Perhaps it is something that we can fix ourselves. If not, then I’ll call a repair man and take it from there. I really hope we don’t have to take money out of our emergency fund, but that is what it’s there for.
Oh no Tricia! I really hope it isn’t anything major…or if it is, that it is covered under warranty! I just forked out $200 to fix a stupid little switch on my washing machine! BUT the good side of things is that you have the emergency fund! Imagine how much you’d be stressing out if this were 2 years ago!
Have you tried vacuuming out the compresser? Apparently, that needs to be done occasionally. My mother’s very fancy Sub-Zero fridge was always breaking down (unable to maintain the cool) and it turned out that was the problem!
You should think yourself lucky that you might be able to fix it – I am such a girly that I wouldn’t know where to start! I wonder whether investing in a DIY course could be worthwhile for me.
Twiggers said, “Imagine how much you’d be stressing out if this were 2 years ago!”
We don’t even want to go there! I probably would have been in tears!
Jaye – We vacuumed out the coils, but not the compressor yet. That’s a project for today.
The verdict is still out on the freezer still working. I thought it was fine yesterday, but it looks like it is not getting cold enough today. Thank goodness we still have that older freezer in our basement as a back-up (it’s the one we unplugged a while ago since we didn’t really use it and it was sucking power).
It’s got to be the compressor, the newer ones are not made like the old trustworthy garage fridge. Can you set your freezer to as high of a temp as you can get it to make it function like a fridge? Sounds like you have some solutions figured out, hope you can get the fridge fixed.
This is probably obvious to you, but if it is broken, buy a used one through online and newspaper classified ads. No need to run out and buy expensive items new!
Tricia,
Here’s something to think about. I’m not sure what kind of credit cards are in your “credit card family” (I’m sorry if you posted this a while ago) but do you have an AMEX? Many AMEX cards (I know the old fashioned green card for sure does this) if you put your purchase on the card, as one of your perks they extend the warranty on the item for a couple of years. Also since the green card is a charge card not a credit card, you must pay it off at the end of the month.
Hi,
I came across a similar post in another Blog and thought it might help you…
http://bethriftylikeus.blogspot.com/
See her post for today, April 2nd.
Hey Tricia, watch out that you don’t void any warranty you have on the fridge by attempting to fix it yourself. That sucks that it broke down, though!
I assume you have tried the old unplug fifteen minutes and plug back in trick? If something trips the thermostat this is a good way to reset everything and get it cooling again.
Jim – that’s what we are doing now. The freezer is now the fridge. We don’t have it plugged in, but we have some ice in there keeping everything at the right temp. I guess it’s a good thing we kept our old freezer in the basement!
We cleaned out the compressor area. Tomorrow, we will call a repairman since we’ve done what we could do without actually trying to tinker with it. I sort of hope it’s the compressor because that’s covered under the warranty 😉
Seeing how little we actually use the fridge for makes me wonder if we should downgrade to a dorm size fridge. You can usually find those used no problem.