Start with the symptom
Refrigerator problems
A refrigerator tells you more than people expect. Whether the freezer is still cold, whether there is frost, and whether the thing is running at all will usually narrow a fault to two or three possibilities before anyone opens a toolbox. Each page below starts there rather than with a parts list.
Refrigerator Not Cooling urgent
The compartment is warm but the appliance still has power and still makes noise.
Fresh Food Section Warm, Freezer Cold urgent
The single most diagnostic pattern on a refrigerator, and almost never the compressor.
Freezer Not Freezing urgent
Soft ice cream and refreezing frost, or a cabinet that has gone entirely warm.
Refrigerator Leaking Water on the Floor
Where the water appears matters more than how much of it there is.
Ice Maker Not Making Ice
When the freezer is cold, the question is whether water is arriving — not whether the appliance can freeze.
Refrigerator Water Dispenser Not Working
No water, slow water, or water that tastes wrong — three different faults sharing one button.
Refrigerator Running Constantly
The compressor never cycles off, and the cabinet may still be holding temperature.
Frost Building Up in the Refrigerator
Ice on the back wall, around the door, or over the whole freezer — and each location means something different.
Refrigerator Door Not Sealing
A gap of a few millimetres is enough to frost an evaporator and run a compressor continuously.
Refrigerator Making a Loud Noise
Buzzing, clicking, rattling or knocking — the kind of noise narrows it more than the volume does.
Refrigerator Not Turning On urgent
No light, no sound, no display — and the first questions are about the supply, not the appliance.
Refrigerator Control Panel Not Responding
Buttons do nothing, the display is blank or frozen, or settings will not hold.
Refrigerator Freezing Food
Lettuce frozen solid and milk with ice in it, in a compartment that is not supposed to freeze.
Water Collecting Inside the Refrigerator
Water under the crisper drawers, or a sheet of ice in the bottom of the freezer.
Condensation Inside the Refrigerator
Beads on the walls and shelves, or fog on the inside of a glass door.
Bad Smell in the Refrigerator
A smell that survives cleaning usually has a physical source you have not reached yet.
Refrigerator Light Not Working
A small fault, except when it is the first sign of something larger.
Refrigerator Showing an Error Code
A code narrows the search, but only the manufacturer's own table gives it meaning.
Not every refrigerator
breaks the same way.
A built-in is serviced from the front, a column is two appliances, and a chest freezer in a cold garage may not be faulty at all. Find yours.
All refrigerator types
Built-in refrigerator
Flush with the cabinets, serviced from the front, and almost always repaired rather than replaced.
Refrigerator column
Separate refrigerator and freezer towers, each with its own sealed system — so a fault stays on one side.
French door refrigerator
Two fresh-food doors over a freezer drawer — the most common premium layout, and the one with the most to go wrong at the door line.
Side-by-side refrigerator
Full-height freezer beside full-height fresh food, with the ice maker and dispenser built into the freezer door.
Undercounter refrigerator
A single 15 to 24 inch unit under the worktop — front-vented, tightly enclosed, and easily starved of air.
Every kind we serviceAll refrigerators, side by side
The archive puts the 5 types against each other: how to tell which you own, what fails on each, and which manufacturers build them.
How to tell yoursWhat fails on eachWho makes them Open the type archiveNot a refrigerator? Each of these is its own appliance, and has a site of its own.
- Freezerstandalone upright freezers
- Ice makerstandalone and undercounter ice machines
- Wine coolerwine cabinets