I think I may have just fixed our refrigerator!!!
I may or may not have posted a while back about our refrigerator’s horrible grinding problem – on and off, it’ll make this increasingly loud grinding sound … sometimes so bad that you can hear it across the house with doors closed in between. We tried to schedule a service guy to come out for it after it consistently made the sound for about a week, but right around the time when I started making calls, it lessened up and I just knew that it would’ve ended up being one of those cases where they come out, it doesn’t make the noise so they can’t do anything, and I end up getting charged $90 for nothing.
Well, it started making the sound again tonight, but shortly thereafter stopped. Nonetheless, when I was getting a snack later, I couldn’t help but notice that some ice cubes from the dispenser were falling back into a place where it really didn’t look like they belonged. In removing the ice bucket to get them out, I uncovered a huge freakin’ chunk of ice that had built up in the back of the freezer, presumably in the vicinity of one of the big fans back there (it encased a few different things). About twenty minutes later, with the help of my trusty hammer and makeshift chisel/screw-driver, I had this:
It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but that’s several chunks of ice totaling roughly the size of my hand, with each piece being at least an inch thick. Funny how as soon as I dislodged the first huge chunk, I heard a fan start purring that I’ve never heard before! My best guess is that the fan was actually frozen in it’s place inside the freezer and the loud noise would be it trying to break free until eventually the fridge either decided that it didn’t need the fan anymore or just gave up trying to start it.
So I honestly don’t really even know if I actually did anything useful here, but I like to think that I totally saved the day and now I won’t have to hear that horrible grinding sound again from the refrigerator for a very long time! If I had three inches of ice stuck to my back, I know I’d appreciate it if someone else removed it for me…
My parents’ fridge does the same thing. Does yours happen to be a GE? I think the one they have actually got recalled.
Yeah, it’s a GE – does theirs look anything like this?
Holy hell it is! I can’t remember if it is, in fact, recalled, but be prepared to do that like every three months or something.