If your fridge-freezer has developed a fault where the freezer has defrosted, or is not getting cold enough and it’s in a garage, and the temperature is very cold, it could just be that it isn’t suitable for putting in a garage..
.. A surprising number of fridge-freezers in the UK end up in a garage or in an outbuilding. However, did you know that many are not capable of running properly if the temperature surrounding the appliance drops too low?
When winter comes, many people find that their freezer starts to defrost. However, it’s also possible for unrelated faults to cause the freezer part of a fridge freezer to defrost or not get cold enough, so don’t automatically assume the cause is as described in this article
All refrigeration has what’s called a climate class rating, which states the minimum and maximum temperature the appliance is designed to work within. I believe the overwhelming majority of consumers have never heard of climate class so surely its the responsibility of retailers to advise customers about it when selling refrigeration?
Which fridge freezers can defrost in a garage?
It’s combined fridge-freezers. If a combined fridge freezer has only one thermostat (or sensor), which is sited inside the fridge section, it is likely to be affected by this problem. If the ambient temperature of the room it’s placed in gets to around freezing, then the fridge thermostat is likely to shut off. When this happens on appliances with only one thermostat the freezer also shuts off. If the temperature remains cold for several hours then the fridge thermostat will not come back on.
It doesn’t need to because inside the fridge compartment will be plenty cold enough. In really cold weather it is possible for the fridge thermostat to stay off for a long time. Whilst ever the thermostat for the fridge remains off the compressor will stop running and the freezer will eventually start to warm up, at least to roughly the ambient temperature of the garage, which although cold, is not cold enough for frozen food.
As a rule of thumb I would say that if you can set separate temperatures for your fridge and the freezer section I would assume there are separate thermostats controlling the freezer and therefore this issue shouldn’t affect your appliance. (Article continues below..)
What about chest freezers?
Chest freezers should not suffer from this specific issue because they have their own thermostatic control and do not try to control the temperature of two separate compartments. However, if the temperature in the garage significantly exceeds that of its climate class it can’t be guaranteed to work without any issues. Also, if there is little ventilation and or condensation it can cause premature rust and even damage to components inside. I have seen many chest freezers in garages over the years that seem to fair reasonably ok although modern ones may not be so well built.
Is this a bad design? – Problems below 10 degrees?
Manufacturers would say they design them to be installed in a kitchen. However, to me it does seem less than ideal to rely on only one sensor or stat to control two different parts of the appliance (just to save money). Many fridge freezers do have separate stats. As saving money is the only possible advantage I can think of it’s therefore presumably more likely to affect the cheaper range of fridge freezers.
Also, there are reports that many refrigeration appliances are not guaranteed to work properly if temperatures drop below 10 degrees centigrade. I would imagine many people have appliances in parts of their homes and even in some kitchens where the temperature can drop below 10 degrees during the night or – what about when on holiday in the winter when the heating may be left off or on low enough only to prevent freezing?
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If an appliance is installed in a kitchen and temperature drops during the night or holiday periods cause it problems I would say that’s a design issue. You cannot be expected to keep the heating on 24/7 to keep an appliance running. However, if installed in an out building or garage I would think you have much less of a claim other than why weren’t you asked at the point of sale where you would be installing the appliance?
What can be done about it?
A fridge freezer with only one thermostat operating inside the fridge compartment is not suitable to run in a particularly cold environments. If affected you need to either exchange it for a fridge freezer with two thermostats controlling the fridge and freezer independently, or swap it for a separate fridge and freezer, or you need to somehow stop the environment from getting below 4 °C (which is likely to be impractical).
Do I have any comeback if my fridge freezer doesn’t work in my garage?
The short answer is probably not, at least not with the manufacturer, you have placed it in an environment it is not designed for. If it was me I might be annoyed though that the person I bought it from did not enquire as to whether I intended to place it in a garage or not. I would argue this problem is in no way common public knowledge, but most retailers are well aware of it because they get called out to them all the time.
All manufacturers and aftersales engineers also know about this issue because they too get called out lots of times under guarantee and have to tell the customer there’s no “fault” on the appliance and it’s not covered under guarantee. Some might say it’s the responsibility of the shop you bought it from to advise at the point of sale that it is not suitable for fitting in a garage or other outbuilding because the companies (not necessarily individual sales staff) know that so many people place them there. I don’t know whether trading standards would agree or not.
At one time, Comet, one of the largest UK retailers of such appliances carried out a survey where they found that around 15% of call outs to fridge freezers were caused by them being placed incorrectly in a garage or another building subject to very cold temperatures. This being the case, I would have thought it common sense for all their sales staff to be instructed to ask any customer buying such a fridge freezer where they intended to site it but they never were.
This is not only in the customer’s interest but in the interest of the retailer as any customer affected by this problem is likely to be pretty upset about it. At the end of the day it’s unlikely that any retailer is legally obliged to check on these matters but personally I believe they should because it’s very common for people to site fridge freezers in their garage and they should know that.
If affected, is my appliance damaged, or will it recover if moved to somewhere warmer?
If the freezer is defrosting due to the room being so cold it switches off the thermostat inside the fridge – and the fridge freezer is only controlled with one thermostat in the fridge (no stat or sensor in the freezer) then no damage should be inflicted. The freezer has only stopped working because the fridge stat has stopped working. Once temperatures increase it should work normally again. However, make sure you don’t wrongly assume this is the cause of a defrosting freezer as of course faults can occur causing freezers to stop working too.
Could a fridge-freezer start to defrost in a kitchen during winter months if the heating isn’t on?
This question has been asked a few times and I am presuming yes, there could be a problem if you have a fridge-freezer with only one thermostat controlling both the fridge and freezer and you go away on holiday when its cold. I’m not sure how most people do it, but normally when we go away we leave the heating off but we’ve never gone away in winter. If you went away and didn’t leave the heating on low (say around 14 – 15 degrees) then potentially during prolonged cold periods if the ambient temperature in the kitchen drops low enough (around 0 – 4 degrees C or colder) the fridge thermostat or sensor is likely to shut off as the temperature in the fridge becomes cool enough.
This won’t be an issue for the contents of the fridge because of course it’s reached the correct temperature. But if the freezer compartment is also controlled by the stat inside the fridge then this will stop the freezer coming on too. Therefore if the temperature remained cold enough to not require further cooling inside the fridge compartment then freezer compartment will not get any further cooling and after sufficient time has passed will start to thaw out.
The chances are if this did occur then unless you have an appliance with a warning light or sound to indicate the temperature of the freezer has warmed up enough to adversely affect the quality of the frozen food you might not realise the food has partially defrosted compromising its quality.
My advice would be that if you think you could be affected then if any food inside the freezers seems a little off when you thaw it out to use then throw it away. If you do have a fridge freezer that sounds or displays a warning if the temperature has been compromised you should assume the food has been partially defrosted even if it is rock solid when you come back.
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I am interested to note how the problem of keeping a freezer in the garage has prompted so many responses. You will see from my earlier correspondence that I had to scrap a two-year old Proline chest freezer and buy another just before Christmas. The new one (Norfrost – aptly named ‘The New Ice Age’) seems to be working fine. It has quite a lot of frost in the interior and a lot of condensation on the exterior. I hope this isn’t a bad sign!. Maybe DerekQ’s solution to wrap the freezer in insulation (I would suggest polystyrene) may be the way forwrad.
Anyone want to talk about Clock Radios for the bedside table? I’m on my fourth in only a few weeks. They just don’t seem to be able to get it right!
Hello Dave: A separate freezer can’t be affected by this issue at all, only certain fridge-freezers. Maybe it just went faulty. As the temperature a freezer tries to maintain is usually -18 I can’t imagine your garage getting so cold as to turn the stat off unless the temperature dropped to around -20 and even then that wouldn’t cause defrosting because it’s colder than you require.
I can’t say for certain that there would be no issues running a separate freezer in a garage due to the potential damp conditions but they should be separate issues. They should still have a climate rating showing they are designed to run at temperatures no lower than (whatever the rating says) but I can’t see how they could defrost when it gets cold.
Very interesting and helpful information. I bought a frigidaire fridge freezer on 22nd December from Curry’s. It was delivered and placed in our garage by the delivery person and I was told not to plus it in until 6 hours later – which we did. Since then I have had frozen food in the fridge because we have to turn it to the maximum 7 in order to get the freezer to freeze our food (although you could never defrost anything you take out of it very quickly – it’s like lead! If we turn it to six the ice cream turns into milk shake!
We had a fridge freezer in there for years and never had a problem but unfortunately it appears from reading all of these comments that this is a common problem. Not something that we were told though! Have rang for a service engineer to come but as soon as I mentioned that it was in a garage they told me that they would send someone but it was unlikely it was a faulty thermostat and very likely to be because it was in garage. Looks like we are not going to be very lucky sorting this one out.
£200 down the drain!
Hello Nikki. It’s only £200 down the drain if you accept it’s your fault. I’d like to know on what basis retailers or manufacturers would claim the fault and responsibility is purely with the customers who en mass just don’t know about this issue.
As I stated before, as long as retailers are shielded from the consequences of selling these appliances to people they will keep selling them to lots of unsuspecting customers.
Hi, I am informed by various company sellers/technical adviser that freezer will not work properly in room where temperature is below the temperature declared for climatic class. The most adequate version for Europe is class SN that range of work is between 10 and 32 C. (Other classes N, T or ST) For other temperature bellow and higher thermostat will keep off the compressor and food will defrosted
I would like to add that many appliances do work perfectly well inside garages where the temperature drops regularly below that stated in the climate class and people are generally aware of this. I myself have a separate freezer which works fine in winter even when the pipes to the washing machine froze up. It has a defrost warning which triggers an alarm if the food ever partially defrosts which has never triggered.
I also have a separate fridge in the same place which appears to work OK although we use it only to store drinks. I’ve seen many chest freezers work happily for many years in garages all over the place.
It’s just some modern fridge freezers have started to be produced with only one stat in the fridge causing this problem and customers who know from evidence they’ve seen that refrigeration appliances generally work fine in a garage shouldn’t be expected to be aware that there are some designs that will defrost frozen food because they don’t have a proper sensor controlling the freezer section – presumable merely to save money?
Hello Jan. Only if a fridge freezer has just the one thermostat inside the fridge. If a fridge freezer has a separate thermostat or sensor controlling the freezer compartment then it shouldn’t have a problem running even if the temperature drops below freezing because the freezer is set to cool down to -18 degrees C. The outside temperature would surely have to drop to -20 before it caused a freezer thermostat to switch off and even then it wouldn’t start to defrost food.
It may be that other problems may arise if the temperature drops too much below those quoted in the climate class, but regarding this particular issue if temperatures drop too low, only a fridge thermostat should switch off, which isn’t such a problem because the temperature inside the fridge compartment will be cold enough to protect food (which is why the stat switched off). The only issue I can think of is milk could freeze if it got extremely cold but nothing would get too warm.
I do link to my article describing climate class on this article. The problem is that most consumers just don’t know about climate class so they are unaware you can have these problems – especially as it only affects a specific design which relies on a single thermostat control in the fridge compartment.
The big questions are, who’s fault is it if you go to a retailer, buy a fridge-freezer with this (limitation) and find it won’t work in winter if you need it in the garage?
Also, in who’s interest is it that potentially thousands of consumers keep buying these appliances which turn out to be not fit for the purpose they were purchased for? I can’t imagine any retailer being glad about it, or any manufacturer – or any customer for sure.
So who can stop this problem? Manufacturers could stop designing fridge freezers with only one stat in the fridge, or retailers could make sure they understand which appliances are affected and make sure they don’t sell them to anyone needing to put one in an out building or garage.
I see that problem is much more complicated. As far as I know, for new generation of the fridge-freezer a R600a refrigerant is in use instead the previous one. I have myself old type of freezer that works well even in lower temperatures (close to 0) and a new (4y) fridge that had to be adjusted by serviceman to new untypical for this model ambient condition. I need not add that I was aware of loosing of guaranty. Now I am looking for one fridge-freezer and find out problem. Neither technical adviser representing of recognized companies on European market nor serviceman in my country , do not share yours views. Independent of fact one or two thermostats for one compressor only. I do not know, maybe this is just carefulness only to avoid claims basis. It would be nice to have a statement of product designers and to know what for they provide climatic classes restriction even for two thermostats product if you are right. Is it a good question?
I would like to use appliance in lower temperature than 10 C (limited by class SN) without any restriction and serviceman objection if something is wrong with my fridge-freezer work
I just experienced the thawing problem with two fridge/freezers placed in two cold rooms here, and believe I found a somewhat satisfactory solution. However, this got me thinking and I now believe the design flaw is inherent to the idea of a fridge/freezer combo, and is not solvable by introducing a second thermostat or sensor as you suggest.
Let me elaborate: a fridge/freezer combination is sold as a device having two functional units, namely an upper freezer compartment where goods can be frozen to say -18C maximum, and a lower, larger compartment where goods are kept chilled at say +5C maximum, but NEVER below 0C for obvious reasons.
Therefore, the designer of the appliance relies on 1) the active cooling element in the freezer compartment, 2) some calculated amount of thermal transmission between the freezer and fridge sections (airflow and separation/insulation between the sections) and lastly 3) a temperature differential created and maintained between the two sections (23C in our example).
In order to maintain that temperature differential, the warming effect induced by the surrounding ambient through the less-than-perfectly insulating walls and doors comes into play. The warmer the ambient, the higher the temperature differential. Conversely, in a cold ambient, its warming effect is less pronounced and therefore the temperature difference between freezer and fridge section will be reduced. As ambient temperature drops, the combo will eventually find itself in a tight spot.
With two separate thermostats as you suggest, the appliance would face a dilemma when the ambient is say +5C with a resulting temperature differential of say 15C: It could either a) “listen” to the freezer thermostat to keep that section at or below -18C, and see the fridge section go to -3C with damage to food in that section; or it could “listen” to the fridge thermostat (as most combos do) to keep that section near +5C and thus turn the cooling element off, with damage to the food in the freezer section.
There is no obvious answer, it looks like the problem is inherent in the product idea of a combo.
PS congratulations for a very informative website!
We had an old style fridge freezer working well in our garage. Unfortunately it got water damaged after a burst pipe in the very cold weather. Ins company have replaced it but new Hotpoint one exhibits the problems others have mentioned – freezer defrosting etc.
We can’t put it in kitchen unless we remove units etc. If we had separate appliances would either of them work in the garage, which does get very cold in winter?
Reading Beko’s website is confusing their general refrigeration leaflet clearly states all their fridge freezers will work down to -16c but manuals for individual appliances says don’t put in a garage. I think I saw a comment from someone about a Beko, but can’t see it today
We need to negotiate with the loss adjuster asap before we start pulling our lovely kitchen apart. HELP please!