Judy
Gold Post Medal for All Time! 677 Posts April 6, 20180 found this helpful
Best Answer
You will need to take all food out of the refrigerator and freezer, unplug it and manually defrost it. Leave the doors open for 24 hours. Then close the doors, turn on the unit and let sit 6 hours. Hopefully the tenperature will be good
April 7, 20180 found this helpful
You need to completely defrost it. I it has an icemaker, make sure your lines are also thawed out (sometimes freezers thaw out before the waterlines to the ice maker do). Then, start all over with it.
April 7, 20180 found this helpful
Hopefully you have not purchased a lot of cold/frozen food since your return but in any case you will need a place to "keep" your cold/frozen food for about 24 hours or give food away and start over later.
- It is best to begin this process in the morning and preferably on a non-work day (or maybe 2 non-work days).
- Remove everything from your refrigerator and freezer.
- If possible, turn off water valve to ice-maker.
- Unplug the unit and prop both doors open.
- Defrosting a unit this way will make a mess as the overflow tray will not hold all of the defrosting water.
- So be prepared with lots of newspaper and/or lots of cloths to soak up the defrosting water. (There will usually be a lot of water.)
- Remove all removable parts (shelves, trays, etc) so these can be cleaned and dried separately.
- You can clean these later - mix some baking soda in sink or bathtub and let them soak if this will not cause you a problem.
- Be sure to check overflow tray under unit (several times) as it will have to be removed and cleaned also.
- Mix 1/4-1/2 cup of baking soda and same amount of vinegar (or just one or the other) in a bucket or pan of warm water. Use some soft absorbent dish cloth size cloths to clean the entire refrigerator but wait several hours before attempting to clean the freezer unit. Wipe everything as defrosting continues.
- Do not turn unit on for 24 hours to be sure all water is gone.
- You now have a clean, defrosted unit that should work well for a long time.
- Remove all wet newspapers and cloths and replace all shelves and trays.
- Turn water valve on to ice-maker (if off).
- Plug unit in and set thermometers for both units.
- Close doors for several hours so you can be sure everything is working correctly before replacing any food (also, I'm told, food would make the units take longer to reach correct temperatures).
- If something is still wrong then you will have the units in a condition that any necessary repairs can be made.
Hope it all works out well and you have nice cold units again.
April 8, 20180 found this helpful
Take everything out and put in cooler. Turn off fridge and put towels under ice and leave door open until ice melts. Dry fridge with towels and turn back on. Use fridge thermometer to see if it gets cold.
