Refrigerator Repair

A refrigerator is the one appliance in the house that never gets a night off, and along this coast it works harder than the design engineers had in mind. Salt carried in off the water settles on condenser fins, kitchen dust settles on top of that, and the result is a coil that cannot shed the heat it is supposed to shed. Add a second unit standing in a Lakewood garage through a September heatwave and you have the two conditions behind most of the refrigeration calls we take. Every technician who does this work holds the EPA certification that sealed system repair legally requires, and carries the fans, thermistors, defrost parts, inlet valves and start relays that put a warm cabinet back on temperature the same afternoon.

The order of a refrigerator visit has been the same here since 1979, and it is worth stating plainly because not every shop works this way. The appliance is tested first. Only once the technician has taken live readings and read whatever the machine has stored about itself does anybody name a part, and only then is a price given. On this appliance in particular, the distance between an inexpensive repair and an expensive one is frequently a single measurement, and taking that measurement costs a great deal less than guessing wrongly about it.

What the appointment involves

You are given a two hour arrival window rather than an open ended day, and the technician contacts you before setting out. Once the refrigerator has been tested you will be told what has actually happened, described in language you could repeat to somebody else, and given one price for the part and the labor together. Nothing is taken apart until you have heard that price and agreed to it.

Around three refrigerator repairs in four are finished during that first visit. That is not luck. The vans are loaded from our own service history for this appliance in this part of the coast rather than from a generic parts list, so the things that genuinely give out here are already on board. Where something does have to be ordered, you are told what it is, what it costs and when it arrives, and the return appointment is booked before the technician leaves rather than chased afterward.

Why the manufacturer matters

The makes from our list that build this appliance are set out further down the page, Liebherr, Thermador, Viking, Monogram, GE, LG among them. Who built the machine changes the work more than most owners expect. A Liebherr and a Whirlpool can display precisely the same behavior for entirely unrelated reasons, and the sequence of tests that gets to the answer is different on each. That is the reason we ask for a model number when you book: it tells us which platform we are dealing with before the van is even loaded.

Repair it, or replace it?

Ask us and you will get the numbers rather than a recommendation dressed up as one. Two things settle it: what the repair costs set against a comparable new machine, and how far through its working life this one already is. Once the repair passes half the price of the replacement and the appliance has used up two thirds of the years it was built for, buying new is the better use of the money. Anywhere short of that, and on essentially every built-in or professional appliance whatever its age, repairing is the sensible call. Turning down an afternoon of work costs us less than selling somebody a part they did not need.

Where this work is available

Refrigerator Repair runs in all nine towns on our route: Long Beach, Naples, Belmont Shore, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Lakewood, Rossmoor and Signal Hill. The price, the warranty and the arrival window are identical in every one of them, weekends included, and there is no travel charge inside the ZIP codes named on our service area pages.

Stainless steel refrigerator in a bright modern kitchen — A refrigerator put right without leaving the room it lives in.

Book a refrigerator repair

Pick a day and a time that suits the household. The shop confirms your two hour window afterwards.

Choose a time

(562) 349-1180

Included in every visit

Full testing before any price is quoted
One price for parts and labor together
Thirty days on our labor, in writing
The appliance left level, connected and running

Common errors

What we are called out for on a refrigerator

A refrigerator is the one appliance in the house that never gets a night off, and along this coast it works harder than the design engineers had in mind. Salt carried in off the water settles on condenser fins, kitchen dust settles on top of that, and the result is a coil that cannot shed the heat it is supposed to shed. Add a second unit standing in a Lakewood garage through a September heatwave and you have the two conditions behind most of the refrigeration calls we take. Every technician who does this work holds the EPA certification that sealed system repair legally requires, and carries the fans, thermistors, defrost parts, inlet valves and start relays that put a warm cabinet back on temperature the same afternoon.

The fresh food side is warm but the freezer is fine

This is the single most common refrigeration call we take, and it is almost never the compressor. One evaporator sits in the freezer and cools both compartments, with a fan blowing that cold air forward and a motorised damper deciding how much of it arrives. Stall the fan or jam the damper and the freezer carries on holding zero while the shelves above it climb into the forties. We put a thermometer in each compartment and watch a whole cycle before naming anything.

Frost sheeting across the back wall of the freezer

Every frost free refrigerator melts itself clear several times a day using a heater, a sensor and a timer or board that decides when. Take any one of those three out of the circuit and ice closes over the evaporator until air can no longer pass. Each leg is metered on its own. Fitting a whole assembly to solve a two dollar limit switch is not the sort of invoice we want to hand anybody.

Water pooling under the crisper drawers

The channel that carries meltwater away has frozen shut or silted up, so the water comes forward into the cabinet instead of running out to the tray over the compressor. Clearing the tube solves this week. Putting the drain clip back, the small metal strap that keeps the tube warm enough to stay open, is what stops it returning every winter.

The compressor runs all day and never switches off

Look at the condenser before anything else. Coastal air deposits salt on the fins, kitchen air deposits grease and dust, and together they form a mat that traps the heat the coil is supposed to be losing. A refrigerator in that state chases a temperature it can never reach. Door seals that have gone hard and a thermistor reading low account for most of the rest.

A click, then a buzz, every few minutes

That is the start relay attempting to bring the compressor up to speed and dropping out under load before it gets there. It is worth knowing that this part costs a very small fraction of a new appliance, because more sound refrigerators are thrown out over this one error than over anything else we are called to.

The ice maker has stopped producing

Three usual candidates: the water valve at the back, a fill tube that has frozen solid inside the door, or the ice maker head itself. Undercounter and built in ice machines work on completely different principles and have their own page, because almost nothing that is true of a refrigerator ice maker applies to them.

Makes we service

Makes we service for refrigerator work

These are the manufacturers from our list that build this appliance type. Each one has a page of its own with the problems we see most often on that make.

Couple preparing vegetables together at a kitchen island

How it works

How the appointment works

Three steps, the same on every job, so you know what the visit involves before anyone knocks on the door.

A two hour arrival window, confirmed in advance
Testing carried out before any price is given
Most repairs finished during that first visit
Thirty days on our labor once the work is done

01

Tell us what the appliance is doing

Call the shop or book online and describe the behavior: the make, the model number if the plate is reachable, and what happens when you run a cycle. The more of that we have in advance, the better the odds the right part is already on the van.

02

A technician tests it properly

The van arrives inside your two hour window. The technician reads whatever the appliance has stored about itself, meters the circuit that points at, and then explains in ordinary language what has actually happened.

03

You approve one price

One price for the finished job, parts and labor together, given before anything is taken apart. Most repairs are completed on that same visit, with thirty days on our labor written onto the invoice.

Where we work

Where we handle Refrigerator Repair

The same service runs across every town on this list, at the same price and with the same warranty.

Other appliances we repair

Questions

Questions about refrigerator repair

Is a twelve year old refrigerator worth repairing?

It depends far more on what kind it is than on how old. Built in and column refrigeration from Thermador, Liebherr, Viking, Monogram or JennAir is designed for two decades of service, and a fan motor or a board on one of those is a small fraction of what replacing it plus reworking the cabinetry would come to. A freestanding unit past twelve with a genuine leak in the sealed system is the other end of the scale, and we will show you both numbers rather than steering you.

How much of the day does a refrigerator repair take?

Reading the appliance takes thirty to forty five minutes, because temperatures and currents only mean anything with the machine running. From there, three visits in four end with the job complete, since evaporator fans, thermistors, defrost heaters, water valves and start relays all live on the van. Anything involving refrigerant is booked as a separate appointment so that the gas can be recovered under the rules that govern it.

Why does the coil need cleaning so often near the water?

Because salt does not evaporate. It settles on the condenser and mixes with ordinary kitchen dust into a felt that holds heat exactly where the coil is trying to lose it, and a compressor pushing against that ages faster than the manufacturer ever allowed for. In Belmont Shore, Naples and Seal Beach we recommend clearing it once a year, and the difference that makes is measured in years of service rather than months.