HALP! our refrigerator went kaput!

[duskymonkey]

Fuuucccckkk! Our refrigerator may have gone kaput. Well it's not working as of last night or a week ago. About a week ago we heard a strange noise and thought it was clogged up with dust. We've been meaning to pull it out and get the back cleaned but never got to it so when we heard strange whistling noise we pulled it out asap and vacuumed it and all seemed well. On Monday I took the butter pot out and butter was all soft so I checked the setting and bumped it to be colder - did this daily. Anyways I finally stuck a probe in there last evening and the temp was like 60˚!! Anyways I already called in a rental unit to get us by until we figure out if it's repairable or we'd have to replace it. This blows! Hopefully it's repairable. DNW to spend upwards of 2K right now and the hassle of shopping for one. So we may need a new fridge. What brand do you have? Do you like the performance and how long has it lasted for you. Any issues? Would you recommend it?

[comicSans]

This may be less than helpful, but we have a whirlpool. We actually love it for many reasons, however it is the second in 4 years. Our first one blew a compressor after about 2.5 years. It was repairable for $800 and there was no guarantee the other compressor wouldn't go, or the new one wouldn't last, or something else wouldn't go wrong. So we ended up spending not that much more to replace it with an almost identical one and invested in a longer warranty. We shopped sales, price matched twice, and had a Best Buy gift card so it ended up being a pretty good deal.

Of course I can't exactly recommend it based on the previous one basically dying in a short time. The repair guy that we had come look at it kind of seemed to think it was a fluke tho and said he'd recommend any of the American made brands over an LG or Samsung because they have a lot of issues with all the fancy electronics. I'm sure you'll hear from people that absolutely love those brands tho...

[scotty138]

We have a whirlpool with the freezer drawer on the bottom. I absolutely love it. It is about 5 years old now and we've never had a problem. It has so much room inside. I really didn't want to have a drink/ice dispenser because it requires so much cleaning and the kids would probably play with it and spill. They take up so much room too. Our fridge does still have an ice maker in the freezer.

[microworm]

Mar 16, 2017 13:04:09 GMT -5 scotty138 said:

We have a whirlpool with the freezer drawer on the bottom. I absolutely love it. It is about 5 years old now and we've never had a problem. It has so much room inside. I really didn't want to have a drink/ice dispenser because it requires so much cleaning and the kids would probably play with it and spill. They take up so much room too. Our fridge does still have an ice maker in the freezer.

You are supposed to clean the water/ice dispenser?

Asking for a friend.

[comicSans]

Mar 16, 2017 13:08:31 GMT -5 microworm said:

Mar 16, 2017 13:04:09 GMT -5 scotty138 said:

We have a whirlpool with the freezer drawer on the bottom. I absolutely love it. It is about 5 years old now and we've never had a problem. It has so much room inside. I really didn't want to have a drink/ice dispenser because it requires so much cleaning and the kids would probably play with it and spill. They take up so much room too. Our fridge does still have an ice maker in the freezer.

You are supposed to clean the water/ice dispenser?

Asking for a friend.

My amazing husband takes care of this. Isn't he the best?

ETA: he empties the ice when he thinks it doesn't look or smell right and washes the ice bucket. Other than that we wipe it down occasionally. With the freezer on the bottom, the buttons for the dispenser are about chest height for me - Dd can't reach them. Water in the door is one of my favorite features.

[microworm]

Mar 16, 2017 13:14:16 GMT -5 comicSans said:

Mar 16, 2017 13:08:31 GMT -5 microworm said:

You are supposed to clean the water/ice dispenser?

Asking for a friend.

My amazing husband takes care of this. Isn't he the best?

ETA: he empties the ice when he thinks it doesn't look or smell right and washes the ice bucket. Other than that we wipe it down occasionally. With the freezer on the bottom, the buttons for the dispenser are about chest height for me - Dd can't reach them. Water in the door is one of my favorite features.

Oh ok. I thought there was some maintenance cleaning that you had to do with the dispenser, like run a disinfectant/cleanser through it. The outside gets wiped down frequently and haven't noticed any funky smelling ice.

[rainbowsockmonkey]

We have a black side by side Frigidaire one and love it. Its about 4 years old and we havents had any problems with it. We got it at Lowe's for about $700. I would absolutely buy it again for our next house too.

[comicSans]

We also have a 23 year old kenmore side by side in the basement

[lrmrtn]

We have a Whirlpool side by side. It cost about $2K but we love it. We've had it for 6 years with no issues.

[activebaby]

Ds can get his own ice water = win. He also plays with it = lose. He loves to clean with a paper towel = win. He sucks at cleaning = lose.

[duskymonkey]

comicSans, whatever you do do not get rid of your old kenmore! I hate that nothing is built to last anymore.

[duskymonkey]

scotty138, I love that yours doesn't have those feature. We barely use our ice maker and never use the water dispenser. It taste weird and awful.

[duskymonkey]

Thanks for all your input. I heard good things about whirlpool and will give it whirl searching this weekend. am hoping we may have id the issue too. Our defroster went kaput. The coils were bricked up with ice when we opened up the back tonight. Hubs managed to defrost it using his heat gun and temp seems to be dropping some in the fridge section so hoping it will continue to cool down until rental unit arrives tomorrow am. Luckily we have a meeting with a contractor and will be home anyways. Just have to get everything transferred out of fridge tomorrow so hubs can take that section apart to figure out parts. Jeez! What a hassle!

[becole]

Mar 17, 2017 0:36:18 GMT -5 duskymonkey said:

Thanks for all your input. I heard good things about whirlpool and will give it whirl searching this weekend. am hoping we may have id the issue too. Our defroster went kaput. The coils were bricked up with ice when we opened up the back tonight. Hubs managed to defrost it using his heat gun and temp seems to be dropping some in the fridge section so hoping it will continue to cool down until rental unit arrives tomorrow am. Luckily we have a meeting with a contractor and will be home anyways. Just have to get everything transferred out of fridge tomorrow so hubs can take that section apart to figure out parts. Jeez! What a hassle!

We typically shop appliances at a sears outlet center where they put the stuff that gets scratched on delivery or was the wrong order or the people just returned it. They typically have tons of fridges.

[scotty138]

Mar 16, 2017 13:08:31 GMT -5 microworm said:

Mar 16, 2017 13:04:09 GMT -5 scotty138 said:

We have a whirlpool with the freezer drawer on the bottom. I absolutely love it. It is about 5 years old now and we've never had a problem. It has so much room inside. I really didn't want to have a drink/ice dispenser because it requires so much cleaning and the kids would probably play with it and spill. They take up so much room too. Our fridge does still have an ice maker in the freezer.

You are supposed to clean the water/ice dispenser?

Asking for a friend.

My parents have the water dispenser in the door and it tastes awful. Apparently you at supposed to run vinegar through all of the tubing occasionally, especially if you have hard water. It can also get mold, but I don't think there is any way to see it.

[haykay13]

Mar 16, 2017 13:04:09 GMT -5 scotty138 said:

We have a whirlpool with the freezer drawer on the bottom. I absolutely love it. It is about 5 years old now and we've never had a problem. It has so much room inside. I really didn't want to have a drink/ice dispenser because it requires so much cleaning and the kids would probably play with it and spill. They take up so much room too. Our fridge does still have an ice maker in the freezer.

We've had this one since November and I really do like it except the drawer is kind of loud when I am trying to sneak ice cream out of it after DS goes to bed 😂

Lowes has it on sale for about $1000 right now!

[activebaby]

I love fridge door water. Didn't know that part about vinegar. We regularly change the filter though

[duskymonkey]

becole, that's a brilliant idea! I don't know if there is one here but I;ll have to do some googling this weekend.
Well, we zeroed in on the faulty part or rather hubs did. Pretty lucky he's handy being an engineer and all LOL! so hopefully we can get parts tomorrow and get it up and running again this weekend and see if that is the only failure but at least we'll still have the rental fridge for a month. The awful part is its parked right by our front door LOL! It was the only available space we have in the house other than a spot in our MB hahaha!

[duskymonkey]

activebaby, you may have a newer model. Many new ones now have a filter. Ours is horrid tasting and the ice gets all funky tasting too so we hardly ever use it.

[duskymonkey]

Here's an interesting bit of info if anyone wants to know, as we were researching refrigerators, we found out that Whirlpool makes Ikea refrigerators and their warranty is 5 years! Most manufacturers only have 1 yr with the option to purchase extended 2 or 3 yr warranties. FX we wont be needing to purchase a new refrigerator.