We are involved in manufacturing of food - Chinese Tim sum which is pre-steamed and supply to retailers who will have to warm it for sale. After steaming we kept them in a freezer. By regulation (FDA) freezer should be -13 to -18 degrees, We find keeping it freezer overnight would make our products too hard and take long time to steam. Besides regulatory requirement (FDA) What would be a good temperature to maintain in the freezers to ensure our products are kept fresh ater 24 to 48 hours.

if the machine has been put into 'Demo Mode' the cooling stops working. It is a special setting for when the unit is on the sales floor.... What is the model number and brand?
For Kitchen Aid the way to end DEMO is to hold the 'max cool' and 'cooling on/off' for several seconds until the control beeps...

That alarm light means that the unit was too warm for a period of time. The door may not have closed properly. It is a warning to you that the food may have thawed out. It does not mean something is wrong. To reset it switch it off and on or unplug it for a minute.

Hello Tim;

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

You do not have a major problem. This is a easy fix.

When you open your freezer door and then close it you are pushing air into your freezer. This is where the sound is coming from.

On your drain tube in the back that goes to your drain pain there might be a black rubber grommet on the end. The initial design was to put this restrictive rubber element from having air go up your drain tube. Over time the rubber dries and restricts the defrost drain and retains water.

If you have this do what I do on service calls - remove it and throw it away.

You may have a snake type drain tube to your drain pan. Once again the manufacturers engineers, with no field experience, decided to put a loop in the drain tube to prevent warm air getting into your unit. Well, the defrost condensate gets caught in the loop. That is where you are hearing the noise.

The drain tube use to be a straight tube. And so, that is where we are back to. It worked fine. Manufacturers changed it and now us technicians put the straight drain tube back in.

This information does not mean anything to us if you didn't specify the model. In what temperature range a freezer works we knew thanks to the stars.
One star (-6 degrees centigrade) is perfect for making ice cubes and is sufficiently cold to keep food for three or four days.
** Two stars (-12 degrees centigrade) stores food for fifteen to twenty days.
*** Three stars (-18 degrees centigrade) will keep food safe for up to three months.
**** Four stars (below 18 degrees centigrade) means that the compartment provides the ideal conditions for freezing down fresh and pre-cooked foods.

Dado

Good day,
Manufacturers of freezers do not give the option of running the machine much above that temperature. Normal operating temperature for a freezer is about -2 to about 8 above F.
Otherwise people could accidentally set the temp too warm and cause a loss of food.
Some appliance parts houses carry universal thermostats that could possibly cover the temperature range your looking for, but 30 degrees is far to warm to preserve frozen food safely.

shows that you have food that is still warm/wet inside the wrappers.they are frosting up inside the bags.....will cause frezer burn if kept too long....

there is in-sufficient supply of gas from the thermostat.

SUM HUSBAND. call the handyman N-E-WAY

I have the same model + problem. You should not need to defrost this model manually if it's working correctly, but the ice build up you describe is probably due to a blocked pipe in the auto-defrost system at the back. You need to defrost properly to prevent recurrence.

Behind the upper freezer drawer there's an aluminium tray behind a plastic grille. Every few days this tray warms up to melt any accumulated ice behind this plastic grille (full height of the freezer). A pipe should take the meltwater down to a plastic tray below (pipe + plastic tray are visible if you take the lower panel off the back). Your problem is too much ice blocking that pipe: the heater can't cope and it doesn't melt, so the ice 'cascades' down the back behind the bottom drawer.

When you manually defrost, you must ensure that this pipe is clear, otherwise the auto-defrost won't work, and you may have to defrost manually again within days.

I have found that the best way to defrost the pipe is to remove the lower back panel, disconnect the corrugated flexible plastic pipe from the stub that comes from the bottom of the freezer, + pump steam into the stub (gently) using a hand-held steamer (with tube + nozzle). You don't have to empty the freezer or move your food as the door stays closed, and no steam gets into the freezer until the pipe is unblocked. Be sure to unplug the freezer before taking the back off! [There is a fan in this area that could start up without warning]

Check how much of the pipe is blocked by gentle probing with a pencil: the aluminium tray is about 105mm above the bottom of the stub. This measurement is important…

When the pipe is clear, there may still be too much ice in the aluminium tray above (not sure how much is 'too much') if you only created a narrow 'chimney' though the block of ice (likely to get blocked again). You need to widen that chimney by melting more of the ice in the aluminium tray. I use a simple steam nozzle made from an old-fashioned Bic pen with a couple of 1mm holes drilled just below the coloured bung at the end. This directs steam onto the walls of the 'chimney' rather than upwards.

There's no point steaming the walls of the plastic 'stub' pipe, so only use the home-made nozzle when your probe reaches 105mm (i.e. when you have melted all the ice in the plastic stub tube but before your 'chimney' has broken through the block of ice in the aluminium tray). If you judge this right, you'll melt almost all of the ice under a still-frozen top surface: no steam will get into the freezer and your food will stay frozen. With a probe it will be clear when you've broken through the top surface of the ice. When you have done so, it's time to look inside the freezer to see how well you have cleared the aluminium tray.

It's perfectly feasible to get all this done in 30 minutes.

Don't forget to replace the corrugated plastic pipe + valve at the bottom. It stops humid air from going into the freezer and icing up in exactly the area we've just been defrosting.

Take a lot of care with steam jets as they can burn you badly. You should check a first aid website so you know what to do BEFORE it happens.

Some of these tips may be helpful: (1) run the freezer at -18 degrees (the 'warmest' setting) so it's not working so hard. (2) Leave a big gap (>100mm) between the back of the freezer and the wall. (3) Clean the matrix of delicate tubes to the left of the fan whilst you have the back off [a small bottle brush is ideal; remove the fan for better access]. (4) Put something between the middle of the freezer and the wall to prevent the warm air that's being blown out behind the fridge from being sucked into the air intake behind the freezer (there is a baffle built in underneath, but nothing behind. (5) Mount the fan on spacers (with longer screws) so that it's closer to the heat exchanger… this means that a larger area of grille can act as an air intake. (6) Raise the unit off the floor a little to free up the air intake path beneath the freezer.

Make sure nothing is inhibiting air flow. I don't think it is advisable to store food in an ice machine however that is not likely the problem unless the food itself is inhibiting air flow. Most ice machine manufacturers recommend against storing any food in an ice machine. If there is a freezer component in you model the check to see if the evaporator coils are frosting up and the frost is blocking airflow causing the ice storage chamber to get warm. High humidity can cause frosting. Leaving a door to the ice maker open too long can cause frosting. A low refrigerant charge can do this although it seems logically like it should not. With a very slightly low charge one end of the evaporator gets super cold and the other end is not cold enough. Frosts starts collecting on the super cold end and accumulates across the evaporator coil to the other end eventually blocking all air flow. With too much humidity from open doors frost accumulates over the entire evaporator evenly but still blocks. You shut the unit down. It thaws out and works OK on restart until frost again builds up. If its not a frosting problem but it just stops making ice then the ice may not be releasing. Check the water supply and change any filters to insure good water flow. A good water supply is required for proper release and harvest of the ice in many ice machines. If the ice doesn't release it takes a shut down and thaw to clear the suspended ice out. Check for these things and write back if you need further assistance and can provide me with more details.