Fridge not cooling

enda1

Hi all,

The fridge is a La Sommelière wine fridge.
The refrigerant is R600a - 40 grammes.

The problem started as a large build up of solid ice up to 3cm thick!) on the top inside face. This is where a circulation fan is (the fan is running as normal).

I turned off the fridge and scraped off this layer of ice.

Ever since the fridge simply doesn't cool at all. When I turn on the fridge it digitally displays the current temperature (24 degrees at the moment) and I can digitally set the target temperature (set as 12 degrees).

The fridge sounds like it's working, the compressor sounds like it's working and the bottom one rung of the condenser is hot but none of the rest of the condenser is hot at all and it goes up about 1m in height in all to give an idea of scale.

None of the inside surfaces of the fridge get cool to the touch at all.

The fridge has done two house-moves in total and not been treated the best in them (e.g. twisted and turned in all aspects to get around tight corners). Could that be relevant?

Is it likely that the refrigerant is depleted or there is a blockage in the circuit or simply the compressor isn't working properly?

I can't seem to get a repair person out because they all say they don't know the brand... annoying! (I'm in the UK so I guess any of you who work on domestic repairs couldn't help in person?)

Thanks for any suggestions.

ps If it's probably refrigerant that needs topping up are there specialists who I should contact to take care of this and how much would I be looking at for a callout to do the job?

The Red Ace

Typical of a gas leak, unless the area where it leaked is visible on the pipework and can be repaired, forget about re gassing. a visible leak will usually show up as oily on the affected area of the pipe