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Your fridge not cooling OR freezing? The primary purpose of a refrigerator is to provide cold compartments where you can store food items safely. So, a Samsung unit that doesn’t cool or freeze requires immediate troubleshooting. You need to fix the problem quickly or have damaged food!
Your fridge won’t cool or freeze if it has no reliable power supply or doesn’t have the correct temperature settings. Besides that, dirty condenser coils prevent the unit from releasing heat to the surrounding environment, thereby keeping it warm. Lastly, ensure no heat-producing appliances are next to the fridge and maximize its ventilation by placing it an inch away from anything nearby.
Read through this article to understand why your fridge isn’t cooling correctly and how the problem can be fixed.
Why Isn’t My Samsung Fridge Cooling Or Freezing?
A lack of cooling in your refrigerator can boil down to several reasons, including human error and technical problems.
Here are the most likely reasons your unit is not cooling or freezing and the best ways to resolve them quickly;
1. Power And Settings
When you begin troubleshooting this issue, you can save time and effort by starting with things that are easy to rule out. So, first and foremost, you must ensure that your fridge has the power it needs and is set correctly.
Firstly, a refrigerator unit requires a stable and continuous supply of electricity. That way, it can continue working over an extended period to achieve the cooling and freezing you want without any interruptions.
Simultaneously, you must ‘tell’ the fridge how much cooling or freezing you want. In other words, you must set the appliance correctly before it can perform how you want it to.
That’s done with just a few button-pushes on the fridge’s control panel.
What’s gone wrong: When you open your fridge to find that it’s neither cooling nor freezing, start by checking that the appliance is turned on. Unfortunately, modern fridges run so quietly that they can shut off, and users wouldn’t notice it for a while.
Sure, you’ve likely plugged the fridge into the wall socket. But is the circuit breaker still on? Or have any fuses in your home blown and shut the appliance off?
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Besides that, someone might have unknowingly set the fridge temperature too high. That will leave your unit feeling warm despite being turned on and in excellent condition.
What you can do: Firstly, check that your fridge has the power supply it needs. It must be connected to a wall socket on a circuit with a functioning circuit breaker.
Then, check the settings so they’re at or below 40° F for the fridge and 0° F for the freezer.
Read: 5 Reasons Why Samsung Fridge Not Cooling + Service Manual + DIY Heater
2. Dirty Condenser Coils
Next, inspect your fridge’s condenser coils. These metal coils are located behind the refrigerator unit, exposed to the air. They aim to get rid of all the heat from inside the fridge and freezer compartments, keeping them cool.
The condenser coils have plenty of air moving through them thanks to a fan continuously blowing air through them. That constant motion of air allows the coils to dump more heat effectively.
What’s gone wrong: Because there’s always air flowing through the condenser coils, they become the perfect trap for dust. That dust will stick to the coils and build up over an extended period until every inch of those coils is covered.
But the dirtier those coils become, the harder it’ll be for the fridge to remove its heat and stay cold. That condition continues to worsen until the appliance can neither cool nor freeze at all.
What you can do: You can fix this problem by thoroughly cleaning the condenser coils. However, be careful not to touch them with your hands, as they are typically hot.
Instead, shut the fridge off and give them time to cool. Then, use a brush to remove as much dust from the coils as possible.
You should repeat this process monthly to prevent the dust from building up too much and repeating this problem.
Read: Why Samsung Fridge Is Making “JackHammer” Noise?
3. Nearby Heat Sources
Remember that your appliance produces cooling and freezing by removing heat from the compartments. Then, that heat escapes into the surrounding environment through the condenser coils described earlier.
For that process to function optimally, the surrounding air needs to be cool enough to absorb any heat from the fridge’s condenser coils.
What’s gone wrong: The heat-removing process described above cannot happen if the area around your fridge is too hot.
That will prevent the fridge’s condenser coils from releasing heat into the air. And as a result, the appliance won’t produce enough cooling or freezing inside.
Three kinds of nearby heat sources can affect your fridge that way, which are the following:
- Hot appliances next to the refrigerator, like stoves and ovens
- Direct sunlight from nearby windows that lands on the fridge
- Scorching climates where temperatures are always high
What you can do: Your goal should be to reduce the temperature around the refrigerator unit as much as possible. That can mean removing it from heat-generating appliances like ovens and stoves and blocking its exposure to direct sunlight.
In hot climates, it’s best to keep the refrigerator indoors or at least in a shaded area.
Read: 3 Ways To Fix Samsung Fridge Not Cooling After Power Outage
4. Insufficient Ventilation (fridge not cooling or freezing)
Earlier, you read that your refrigerator must be in a place free from high temperatures. Besides, the fridge must have enough ventilation, particularly near the condenser coils where heat is released.
That’s easy enough to achieve simply by placing a gap on all sides of the refrigerator. But, most importantly, the fridge must have a gap between the appliance and the wall behind it.
What’s gone wrong: Your fridge isn’t cooling or freezing because it doesn’t have enough ventilation. Typically that means the appliance is too close to the wall behind it. However, placing it in a crowded kitchen corner will also cause the same problem.
What you can do: This problem has a very straightforward solution: you must relocate the fridge, so there’s a one-inch gap on all sides of the appliance.
Read: 5 Reasons Why Samsung Fridge Evaporator Fan Is Not Working
Final Thoughts
A refrigerator that provides no cooling or freezing is useless, so you must resolve the issue as soon as possible. While technical faults are a possibility, it’s essential that you first troubleshoot the basics. In summary…
Make sure the appliance has power and is set correctly. Then, keep its condenser coils clean and ensure plenty of ventilation. Lastly, you must remove any major heat sources nearby, whether a heat-generating appliance or exposure to direct sunlight.
An older appliance may have more things wrong than right. These repairs become expensive and time-consuming. It might be time to look into a newer, energy-efficient appliance.
