Problem Solved: Jenn Air Refrigerator Warm, Freezer Cold

Knowing that I’m probably not the only person who has had this problem, I want to share how I recently identified, and fixed, a problem with my Jenn Air refrigerator, model # JCD2389GEW.

Several weeks ago, we had a power outage that lasted over four days. Needless to say, all of the food in our Jenn Air refrigerator and freezer went bad. When the power came back on, however, we started having problems with our refrigerator. The freezer worked fine, but after about a week I started noticing the refrigerator wasn’t cooling properly.

My noticing the problem started with the built in water dispenser. The water being dispensed was no longer cold, like it was before the power outage.

A few days later, I noticed our orange juice seemed warm. That’s when I put a thermometer in the fridge and saw that it was registering near sixty degrees.

After doing some research, I realized what had probably caused the problem. That is, during the power outage, all of the ice in the ice maker melted and left water sitting throughout the freezer compartment. Once the compressor came back on, that water vaporized and froze on the cooling coils behind the freezer compartment. That ice then reduced the volume of air that could flow through the coils, resulting in an eventual complete shutdown of air flow to the refrigerator.

How did I fix the problem?

The solution was actually pretty easy.

First, I turned off the power to the refrigerator and freezer. I then removed the panels covering the cooling coils. They can be accessed by removing the shelves and drawers in the freezer and by removing a couple of hex bolts in the back of the freezer compartment.

Once I removed the panels, it wasn’t very obvious that the cooling coils had frozen over. There was a good inch or two of ice and frost covering it.

I then took a standard hair dryer and melted all the ice.

Knowing that the problem was caused by excess moisture in the refrigerator and freezer, I took care to soak up all water as it dripped form the coils and then to thoroughly dry the interior of both the freezer and refrigerator compartment.

In all, the solution took about an hour to implement.

So far, so good. The refrigerator has returned to an acceptable temperature and has been running well for several days.

UPDATE
Well, about two weeks after I completed the above fix, the refrigerator did it again. We called in an appliance repairman to determine what the problem is (at a cost of $59.95 for the service call). He said this is very common with Jenn-Air refrigerators and it’s either the defrost heating element, defrost thermostat, or the adaptive defrost control panel. He tested the heating element and ruled it out because the readings were okay. He decided the problem was probably the adpative defrost control and offered to replace it for $450 parts and labor.

We decided we’d rather buy a new refrigerator for $800 than pay half that just to repair one part in the existing refrigerator. Then, I had an idea and decided to check ebay for the adaptive defrost control. I found it for $39.99 (plus free shipping) and found a website that explained that the replacement is pretty easy.

I ordered the part and paid $20 for expedited shipping. Once it arrived, the installation was quite easy. It took about 30 minutes to install the new part, plus another 30 minutes to thaw the freezer coils with a hair dryer again.

I’ll check the freezer coils again in about a week and report back. If it’s still freezing over, I’ll install a new thermostat and see if that does the job. Regardless, this is way better than paying $450 for someone else to do the work (or $800+ for a new refrigerator).

UPDATE #2
I checked the coils several weeks after installing the new adaptive defrost control panel and everything looks great! No freezing problems any more. And my wife is now very proud of my new refrigerator repair skills.