Fridge advice from people who fix them for a living

Warning signs · 4 min read

Top 5 signs your fridge compressor is failing

The compressor is your fridge's heart, and like a heart, it usually gives warnings before it gives up. Catch these early and you're often looking at a small repair instead of a big one.

• A louder hum than usual. Compressors are never silent, but a deepening drone or growl means the motor is working harder than it should.
• Clicking on and off every few minutes. Short cycling often starts with a failing start relay, a cheap part. Ignore it, and the constant restarts strain the compressor itself.
• The side or back of the fridge is hot, not warm. Some heat is normal. Too hot to keep your hand on is not.
• Food not staying cold while the fridge "runs all day". A worn compressor can run continuously without building enough pressure to cool properly.
• Tripping the electricity. A compressor that trips your earth leakage is telling you its motor windings are on the way out.

One sign on its own isn't a verdict, but two or more together deserve a proper test. In Gauteng, load-shedding surges are the most common reason compressors fail early, so a surge protector is cheap insurance. If your fridge is showing these symptoms, book a diagnosis before it becomes a fridge full of spoiled food.

For businesses · 4 min read

How to maintain a commercial fridge in South Africa

Commercial refrigeration fails on Friday afternoons, it's practically a law of nature. The difference between businesses that lose stock and businesses that don't usually comes down to a few unglamorous habits.

Clean the condenser coils monthly. Dust, grease and packaging fluff blanket the coils and force the unit to work harder in our climate. A soft brush and ten minutes once a month adds years to a unit's life.

Log temperatures daily. A unit drifting one degree a week is invisible day-to-day but obvious in a logbook, and you'll need those records for health and HACCP inspections anyway.

Mind the door discipline. Torn gaskets, propped-open doors and overstacked shelves that block airflow are behind half the "it's not cooling" calls we get from kitchens.

Give it breathing room. Fridges crammed against walls or boxed in by stock can't shed heat. Most need at least a hand's width of clearance around the condenser.

Service before peak season. December trade is not the time to discover a tired compressor. A pre-summer service catches weak parts while it's still cheap and quiet to fix them. Our commercial refrigeration team does scheduled servicing with the paperwork your inspectors want to see.

Summer · 3 min read

Why fridges stop cooling in hot weather

Every Highveld heatwave brings a spike in "my fridge suddenly can't cope" calls. It isn't coincidence, heat attacks a fridge from three directions at once.

First, the physics: a fridge doesn't make cold, it moves heat out of the cabinet into the room. The hotter the room, the harder that job gets, and a unit with dusty coils or a marginal gas charge that coped fine in winter simply runs out of capacity in summer.

Second, the workload: hot weather means more door openings, warmer groceries going in, and cold drinks being raided every hour. Each one adds heat the fridge must remove again.

Third, the weak links: compressors and capacitors run hottest in summer, so parts that were already tired tend to fail in January rather than June.

What helps: keep coils clean, leave ventilation space around the unit, don't set the thermostat colder than needed (it doesn't cool faster, it just runs longer), and let leftovers cool before they go in. If your fridge is running flat-out and still losing the battle, that's a capacity problem worth diagnosing, book a technician before the next heatwave finds the weak spot for you.

Running costs · 3 min read

Energy-saving tips for fridges in Gauteng

Your fridge is one of the few appliances that never switches off, which makes it one of the biggest single line items on your electricity bill. A few small habits bring that number down, and most of them also extend the life of the fridge.

• Set it right: 3–4 °C for the fridge, −18 °C for the freezer. Every degree colder than necessary costs roughly 5% more electricity for no benefit.
• Check the door seal with a piece of paper. Close the door on it, if the paper slides out easily, the seal is leaking cold air all day, every day.
• Defrost before ice gets thick. More than about 5 mm of frost acts as insulation in the wrong direction and makes the compressor work overtime.
• Keep it full, but not crammed. A reasonably full fridge holds its temperature better through door openings and load-shedding, but air still needs to circulate.
• Dust the coils twice a year. Dirty coils are the quietest electricity thief in the house.
• Use a surge protector. It saves the compressor when the power comes back, and a healthy compressor is an efficient one.

A fridge that's suddenly using more power than it used to is usually telling you something. If yours runs non-stop or trips the mains, our residential repair team can find out why.