The fridge is running but the freezer is sweating: the four checks before you buy a new one

A fridge that is "not cooling" is nearly always cooling badly - and the four reasons for badly are checkable this afternoon with a torch, a sheet of paper and a brush. The order below is by how cheap each fix is, because the replacement is the last thing on anyone's honest list.

Check one: the coils and the room

The grille at the back or below the door is the fridge's radiator, and its job is to dump heat out; a coat of dust turns it into a blanket - the compressor runs longer, the inside stays warmer, and the meter climbs. Unplug, brush and vacuum the fins, keep the unit off the wall (the air needs the gap), and look at the neighbours: a fridge sandwiched beside a hot generator wall or under a window's direct afternoon sun is fighting a temperature war the manufacturer's design never planned for. A moved fridge is a cooled fridge; the move is the repair.

Check two: the door seal

The rubber gasket is the fridge's electricity bill and its humidity barrier. The paper test - a sheet left in the door should resist a pull out - finds the honest answer fast; and the torch-in-the-cavity night trick (a phone light inside, see it glowing around the door edge) shows the leak's exact mile marker. A warped seal is either cleaned (food film on the lip keeps it from seating), renewed (model gaskets exist; the number is on the seal or the back sticker), or - on old units - coaxed back with warm water and patience. The freezer's own worst case: a frost ridge under the gasket means the seal has been losing air for weeks, and the defrost that follows is the reset, not the fix.

Check three: stuffing, and the air's route

Cooling is circulation: the vents inside the box must stay clear for the air to return, so a fridge packed like a suitcase cools its door shelves warm while the back freezes. The fan-forced freezers with the little vent grille inside are the worst offenders for "everything at the front is soft" when someone blocks that grille with the carton wall - rearrange before you suspect the machine. And the thermostat argument: colder settings are not faster settings; the fridge runs to temperature, and a dial cranked to max on a hot day mostly buys a freezer that ices up and a fridge that sweats.

The two that belong to the technician

Compressor hot, fans turning, coils clean - and the box still warm: that is the sealed system, refrigerant or the compressor's own valves, and this desk will say what every honest repair person says: a regas on an old unit is money loaned to a machine near the end of its loan period, and the quote should come with a replacement comparison, in writing, both numbers. And the buzzing that starts and stops every few minutes like someone is trying to wake it: a dying start relay or compressor - unplug it tonight, because a stuck compressor is a fire's patient candidate, and the smell of hot enamel is the page's one emergency line.

The habit list

Back-brush each harmattan-end; the paper test every quarter; hot food cools on the counter before it goes in; and the fridge full of one month's cooking oil and three bottles is the fridge that works - air needs somewhere to go. These four lines are the difference between the appliance that lasts twenty years and the one the market sells twice.