Left door open

Hello Deena;

My name is Peter. I am a retired field service refrigeration technician.

There is no reset for the alarm. The alarm goes off when you are not maintaining temperature.

During the time the door was ajar, warm air got into the freezer either icing up and locking the cooling fan or forming a block of ice on the cooling coils (Restricting cooling air flow.)

The best thing you can do, unless you want a $300.00 plus service call to defrost everything, is to turn power off to the freezer. Open the freezer door. Have plenty of old towels to soak up the water in the bottom of the freezer as it defrost.

You did not provide a model number which is located on the inside wall of the freezer. Every 8-10 hours your freezer will completely shout down for 20-30 minutes where only the light works and the defrost heater turns on. The ice build up is too much for the defrost heater to handle.

In some freezers the defrost mode is in the control board, in others it is a separate component that you can repeat trip using a flat head screw drive.

Might need to be 'cycled' through a total defrost and re-cool period, how long have you left it?
Might mean you will have to empty it into another unit while it settles down :-(

keep the door closed by all means any small opening can leave the freezer start to defrost slowly without you knowing it

if door was left open for extended period of time it has probably iced up around the evaporator fan, try to defrost around fan area using a hair dryer

Without knowing if it a freezer or a cooler I will have to guess. Could be caused by a few things. I'll list them in order of the one I think is the most common reason.

Cooler

1. Door gaskets or someone left door open for a time.
2. Thermostat set to low.
3. Low freon
4. expantion valve out of adjustment or needs replaced

Freezer

1. Defrost not working (Will have heaters with a timer)
2. Low on freon or expantion valve

evaporator coils is probably frosted from condinsation.shut door set at normal setting and give some time.

Hi, Check the rear panel inside the freezer and see if it has frost building up on it. If so, shut the refrigerator off for 24 hours or remove the rear panel and defrost it with a hair dryer.
It should be ok after that ubless the evaporator fan motor has gone bad.
Please let me know if this helps or if I can assist you further.

Vic

From what I can gather, you have a self defrosting freezer and the "motor" you speak of is the fan inside the freezer. If this is correct, do this:
Unplug freezer. Unload all food into coolers or other freezer space. Leave freezer door open for a day to allow it to manually defrost. Plug freezer back in after minimum 24 hours and confirm fan running and cooling before loading back up with food.

If the door was left ajar for any extended period frost has built up on the cooling coils. A complete defrost of the freezer should take care of the problem. Normally a frost free system will clear the ice from the cooling coil when the defrost time cycle happens. However frost may have built up in areas where the heaters can not readily remove it in a normal defrost cycle and shutting the unit down with the door open for about 24 hours should clear it out.

Was the door left open for a long period of time.? Sometimes this causes so much ice that it re freezes and can't clear the drain. The only solution is to unplug and let sit with doors open for at least 24 hours. to get all the ice off the coils. Then use a pipe cleaner on the drain then use a turkey baster to force water through. then a mild bleach solution. Check the door gaskets if they are ripped or loose or the door warped and not sealing tight this will also cause this problem. If this still doesn' t solve the problem it is probably a defrost problem Usually the timer or defrost thermostat.