We have a fairly new Whirlpool side-by-side refrigerator freezer in the garage that doesn't keep freezer foods properly frozen. We had an appliance repairman come out, but the freezer was quite cold when he checked, and he couldn't find anything else wrong. The condenser coils were clean, the frost pattern looked good (??), the fan was blowing air, nothing was obstructed or overloaded, etc. He left without fixing anything.
So I bought a couple temperature monitors from Amazon (the very cool SensorPush units) and put them in the freezer and fridge compartments to see what was going on. I discovered the freezer temperature cycles over a roughly 40 degree F range (-10F to 29F) every four hours. It stays below freezing, but just barely. And with these settings, the refrigerator compartment cycles below freezing at the same period.
To get a point of comparison, I moved the sensors to our kitchen fridge (a SubZero), and then plotted everything in the image below. As can be seen, it does a much better job of maintaining the freezer temperature, keeping it in a narrow band around -4F.
I've done some searching, but I cannot find any clear spec or guidance for how much temperature variation is normal or acceptable. Is there a spec or guideline for this? Any thoughts on what could cause such large temperature swings? Any particular components that ought to be checked to diagnose this?
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So I bought a couple temperature monitors from Amazon (the very cool SensorPush units) and put them in the freezer and fridge compartments to see what was going on. I discovered the freezer temperature cycles over a roughly 40 degree F range (-10F to 29F) every four hours. It stays below freezing, but just barely. And with these settings, the refrigerator compartment cycles below freezing at the same period.
To get a point of comparison, I moved the sensors to our kitchen fridge (a SubZero), and then plotted everything in the image below. As can be seen, it does a much better job of maintaining the freezer temperature, keeping it in a narrow band around -4F.
I've done some searching, but I cannot find any clear spec or guidance for how much temperature variation is normal or acceptable. Is there a spec or guideline for this? Any thoughts on what could cause such large temperature swings? Any particular components that ought to be checked to diagnose this?
