First, save the food
Keep the door or lid shut. Frigidaire states its freezers can keep food frozen for two days in a power outage if the seal is tight. A warm freezer with a failed part acts much the same. Each time you open it to look, you lose hours. If you must move food, do it once and put it in a cooler with ice. Then check the outlet with a lamp, since a tripped garage outlet is a common cause.
Frigidaire freezer types
Frigidaire makes upright freezers and chest freezers. Several uprights are sold as garage ready, in sizes like 16 and 20 cubic feet. Frigidaire sells those for use in a garage, where the air runs hot and cold. Newer uprights use the EvenTemp cooling system. It has a variable-speed compressor and moves cold air all the time to keep each shelf at the same temperature.
An upright has a fan, a hidden coil and an automatic defrost system. A chest freezer is simpler. Its cold coils are in the walls and most are defrosted by hand. So the two styles break in different ways.
Upright freezer faults
- Thick frost on the back panel. The defrost heater, the defrost thermostat or the control has failed.
- Top shelves soft, bottom hard. The evaporator fan has stopped or is iced in.
- Frost around the door edge. The gasket is torn or the door is out of line.
- Door alarm that will not quit. The door switch or a sensor is giving a false signal.
- Warm and silent. No power, a dead control board or a failed compressor start part.
With a defrost failure, melting the ice with the door open gets you cold again for a week or two. Then it frosts back up. The heater or thermostat still has to be changed.
Chest freezer faults
A chest freezer has no fan to fail. When it warms up, we test the thermostat or sensor first, then the start relay on the compressor. A lid gasket that has gone flat lets in damp air, and you get snow along the rim. Ice more than a quarter inch thick on the walls makes the freezer run longer. Defrost it by hand and never scrape with metal. The refrigerant lines sit right behind that thin wall.
Clicking, humming and running all day
A click, a short hum and another click means the Frigidaire compressor tries to kick on and cannot. The start relay is the cheap and likely part. We test it and the compressor windings before we say which one it is. On an EvenTemp model, the variable-speed compressor is run by an inverter board, and that board can fail too.
A freezer that never shuts off but stays near zero is often fine on a hot day in a garage. One that never shuts off and is still warm has a dirty condenser, a bad fan or a refrigerant leak. Frost on only one corner of the coil is the sign of a leak.
What we charge to look at a Frigidaire freezer
Looking at a Frigidaire freezer in a home costs $79. Approve the quoted repair and that $79 is waived. Your quote is one firm figure. It counts the Frigidaire part and our labor. A thawing Frigidaire goes to the front of the line for a same-day visit. Freezer calls are taken at 6 AM and we keep working to 9 PM, weekdays and weekends. You can book on our site.
A+ is independent. Ownership has stayed with one family. The techs carry insurance and a license and have passed a background check. Relays, fan motors and defrost parts for Frigidaire are usually on the truck. Freezer repairs are under our 30-day repair warranty.
When a freezer repair makes sense
Frigidaire freezers are fairly priced new. That sets a limit on what a repair should cost. A relay, a fan, a heater, a thermostat or a gasket is well under that limit. Fix those. On a chest freezer, a refrigerant leak or a compressor that has died often costs more than half of a new one. In that case we will tell you to put the money toward a new unit. The food inside counts too. A fast repair can save a few hundred dollars of meat.
We work on freezers in Houston garages all year, where heat is hard on them. The Texas appliance repair page lists the towns. Frigidaire freezer service is also offered around D.C. and Northern Virginia, and in Chicago and Los Angeles. More pages: Frigidaire appliance repair, Frigidaire refrigerator repair and general freezer repair. If your freezer sits in a garage, leave three inches of space behind it so the condenser can shed heat.