Common fault
Why does frost keep building up in my freezer?
Short answer
Frost you have already cleared once and are looking at again is a defrost fault.
Why we start there
The cycle is not completing, and the cause is normally the heater, a thermistor that has drifted out of range, or a control no longer calling for defrost at all. Air is drier here than at the coast for most of the year, so a marginal door seal has less moisture to work with and heavy recurring frost points harder at the circuit than at the gasket. There is one exception, and it is a local one: evenings in this valley bring cooler, damper air in from the west, and a freezer in a garage or a utility room that opens to the outside takes a daily dose of it that a kitchen unit never sees.
What happens next
Garage and utility-room freezers deserve their own answer here, because so many households in Temecula and Murrieta keep one. A cabinet outside conditioned space lives through the full daily swing instead of the kitchen's steady conditioned air: a long hot afternoon, then a sharp drop overnight, every day for months. That means far more compressor hours, a condenser loading quickly in a space that gets opened to the driveway daily, and a drain line that freezes and thaws rather than simply staying frozen. Some frost in a garage freezer is normal and some of it is a fault, and telling us which one you have starts with telling us where the unit is standing.
If you can bear it, leave the ice where it is and call rather than clearing it first, because where the ice has formed tells us as much as the fact that it is there. An evenly furred coil is a defrost failure. A heavy build in one corner near the door is a seal or an alignment problem. Ice sitting on the freezer floor with a clean coil is a blocked drain. Ten seconds of looking before the scraper comes out routinely saves a second visit, and on a cabinet that has been running warm for weeks it also tells us roughly how long this has been going on.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Reviews
What Temecula customers say
We had an emergency when our main refrigerator stopped cooling with a full fridge. The team was courteous, knowledgeable, and fixed it quickly even during a holiday. Their promptness saved us from food spoilage." - Jennifer L., Temeku Hills
Our dual-zone wine cabinet in the bar was reading 55 on the front and the top rack was nowhere near it. He put a probe down at bottle level and showed me the gap, then sorted the damper in that zone. The lower zone had been fine the whole time.
Fridge in our Redhawk kitchen went warm every afternoon and looked normal again at breakfast, so two other companies told us to just watch it. He asked what time it happened, pulled the grille, and the coil was packed solid. Cleaned it and changed the fan behind it.
Rated 4.9 from 673 customer reviews.
Appliance down in Temecula?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Does the unit have to come out of the cabinetry before you can work on it?
Almost never. Sub-Zero built-ins are made to be serviced in place: the condenser is reached through the grille and both sealed systems are accessible from the front. The columns set into tight cabinetry runs in the newer Temecula builds are exactly the ones you least want dragged over tile or engineered wood. If a job genuinely needs the unit forward, you hear that beforehand.