Frugal DIY Refrigerator Repair

This is a guest post from my hubby. We’ll call him Mr. Remodel. He does the work, I brag about it. Or we could call him Mr. Don’t Tell Me I Need To Call A Professional. I will provide the background and he will provide the details. 2 weeks ago, we returned from vacation. He had shut off the power to the house while we were away, so the fridge and freezer were emptied and thawed out when we returned. Upon plugging the refrigerator back in and stocking it will some essentials, we discovered that the freezer size was cooling fine and was frozen quickly. However, the refrigerator side didn’t seem to be cooling. It would feel cool, then not cool, then cool again but it wasn’t being reliable. Last weekend, it gave out entirely and wasn’t cooling at all. In steps my nagging and hubby’s handywork.
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My dear wife has been after me for a post of some sort for a while and recently an odd job has come up so this is the one it must be. In fact it’s possible there was more request for work to go into the post than was actually involved in the project.

After a few days of putting up with on again off again working refrigerator, asking “is it getting colder yet?” and moving the milk back and forth from the fridge side to the freezer side every few hours, something had to be done. Just getting started on a project no matter how small seems to be the hard part with kids scavenging the tools and jumping on my back. These days I dread just changing a light bulb.

The refrigerator problem was diagnosed by my dear wife on Google in a show of motivational “get this done please pronto or I’m going to do it myself and it won’t be pretty” support. Defective evaporator fan or blocked airway was the diagnosis from Dr. Google. This sounds easy enough. There are only so many places such a creature can hide and I’m certainly not afraid to take things apart. I have been doing it since I was a kid, everything from car engines to behemoth computers. This won’t take anything more than a 1/4 nut driver and a regular screw driver.

I removed the ice maker/dispenser to expose the back of the freezer. The old fan was near the bottom center in the following photo.

With the freezer opened up (and unplugged) it’s obvious to us we weren’t going to be keeping anything cold, so the options were…. with old fan in hand…

…looking at new refrigerators on craigslist, buy a new fan on ebay but wont have it for several more days, or split the difference and buy a fan locally and install it, or hire someone to come fix it. All of which are too boring and still will cost me money. After a few minutes of looking the situation over, I remembered I had two fans that may have found their place in life. After pulling them out, I decided there is a good reason I have been saving two 115v electric fans I pulled from a server cooling housing six years ago.

After a quick review of the wiring diagram on the back of the unit to find a good place to plug them in, (after all it’s no good wiring them to something that goes off when the door is closed or similar), I am ready to get started. We have 2 fans to cover the two passages between the freezer and the fridge that are the same voltage and much higher quality than the stock fan. The first fan can be seen in the top right the other sits on the shelf just right of the original fan. Both have been in place a week now and everything has been running smooth as can be. And yes in most cases I would have had to manage a bit longer and replace the stock fan. This one just happened to work out for me having spare parts.