Electronic freezer/refrigerator broke -- free easy repair that might help

[Treasuremapper]

:

Our LG stainless side by side refrigerator freezer broke on Friday. It is only 18 months old. It has an ice / water dispenser on the freezer door.

We called a number of repair shops, and, to make a long story short, we were getting the bad news that the repair would require us to buy a four hundred dollar circuit board, plus labor, plus we would have to wait for two weeks for the part.

Fortunately, the repair man and I got to talking about the fact that we both have five year old girls, how hard it is to absorb something like this just three weeks out from Christmas, and he offered: "you could just unplug it for an hour and then plug it back in." I had the impression that he was not supposed to tell me that.

Well, sure enough, we unplugged for an hour, plugged it back in, and now, here it is Monday, and the refrigerator is working fine. It seems like rebooting a computer.

So -- if this ever happens to you -- try unplugging the refrigerator, waiting an hour, and then plugging it back in.

[ShaggyDaddy]

This is actually a very common behavior in some refrigerators, computers, and televisions. Because they have capacitor fed large "power supplies".

It happens because of a power surge or an overheating capacitor. A fridge is not "on" very often and since it draws a lot of current when it is on, to compensate for the stress, the device uses a capacitor to "save up" power so it can switch on without dimming your lights. It still pulls a lot of power for that instant when it turns on, just not enough to pop the circuit breaker.

If your fridge cycles on during a power surge, it can cause this problem... since power surges are rare, and your fridge cycling on is rare, the problem is relatively rare. If you are lucky, your powersupply trips its internal failsafe, which will stay tripped untill power is interrupted.

however, you got lucky, if the surge is bad enough, this will not fix it, because it can cause electrical damage to the compressor relay, GE Profile series are particulary known for having an undersized relay that tends to go pop if this happens. Our neighborhood had a surge and at least 5 people we know (including us) had their fridges break this exact way... The repair guy (trusted local non-corporate guy) came and fixed everybodies for something like $150 including parts and labor. He explained it to me, so I had to obsessively research it of course.

Most people don't realize that your fridge needs a surge protector for the same reason your computer does... and your fridge is more expensive too, not to mention the food inside, we lost much more on food than we did on the repair bill.

[Treasuremapper]

Should we buy a surge protector for the refrigerator? Your answer makes sense -- we had flickering lights in the kitchen about a year ago and the electrician said it had nothing to do with our lights. He said that the problem was that it had to do with the way the electricity was coming into our house. He also sold us some sort of thing that was supposed to go into the breaker box???

[ShaggyDaddy]

a surge protector is cheaper than a single steak, I would say yes.

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

Good to know!