Why Does Your Refrigerator Get Hot?

Power Failure

• To keep cool, your refrigerator requires electricity to power the start relay, compressor and other vital components that create chilled air. If you have a power failure at your house or discover another reason why power has been cut off from your refrigerator, you can expect your appliance to begin heating up quickly to room temperature. Check to see if the cord is plugged in securely and if a circuit breaker has tripped and cut off power to the unit. Carefully inspect the power cord to see if it has been damaged.

Blocked Airflow

• When the chilled air is created at the expansion chamber and evaporator coil in the freezer section of your refrigerator, a fan blows the cool air throughout the entire refrigerator to cool all of its contents. If the airflow from the freezer is restricted or the fans aren’t blowing, the fresh food compartment may not remain cool enough or even feel hot. Check to see that your fans are blowing when the compressor is running. Look for frost buildup on the evaporator coil or whether ice or some other object has blocked off the opening where cold air circulates to the rest of the refrigerator.

Defrost Timer Stuck

• When the automatic defrost system comes on in your refrigerator, a timer in your freezer compartment tells a small heater located near the cooling coil to switch on and melt the frost away. If the timer malfunctions, the heater may get stuck in the on or off mode. If it's off, frost builds up on the coil and could restrict airflow, causing cooling problems. If the timer is stuck in defrost mode, the heater will stay on indefinitely and heat the entire unit.

Compressor

• The compressor is a strong motor that compresses refrigerant on the back side of the refrigerator. Once compressed, the refrigerant moves up through the condenser coils to an expansion chamber in the freezer next to the evaporator coil, where it quickly vaporizes and chills to create the cold inside the refrigerator. If the compressor stops working because of an internal problem or because the attached start relay won't turn it on, the refrigerant is not compressed and won't produce cold air. This problem must be fixed before the fridge can cool again.