Bottom of freezer compartment is icing over. Build-up seems to be starting at the back, lower-right of the freezer. Guessing it is a thermostat issue, but do not know where to start. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Mike

not defrosting ... bad thermostat

bad heating element

try turning the thermostat down a little,..........don,t know what you got it set on ........but water freezes 32 degrees

Check resistance on bi metal thermostat/heating element.Make sure continuity is present on thermostat before defrosting.Advance derost timer if analog unit.

Check to make sure the fan in the freezer compartment is working and not blocked. This delivers the cold air to the refrigerator. The fan should run every time the freezer calls for cold.

Defrost system failure.

Defrost timer, heater, therma disk, any one could be bad.

You could manually defrost and this would get the Ref back to working for a couple of days before it iced up again. Remember there is a lot of ice build up on the cooling coils in the freezer that you can't see so, a little extra time with a hair dryer is needed to do a complete manual defrost.

remove back panel inside freezer. you will see drain tray at bottom with a drain hole in the middle - this is blocked usually with ice. melt off with a hairdryer and follow up with hot water till water flows away freely

I have a Fisher and Paykel E442B upside down, which is a very similar model, and I just fixed the same problem (temperature was around -4C even though I set the fridge temperature as warm as possible).

The cause of my problem was excessive ice build up on the side of the evaporator coil (which is in the back of the freezer compartment behind the rear plastic panel). I had the same problem around a year or so ago, so I expect it to be a regular occurence. To defrost the coil, I removed all the drawers in the freezer, and the plastic insert by pulling out the bottom of the panel out and rotating it upwards until it released at the top. There are a couple of snap-in tabs holding the panel in, so with a bit of pulling they released. The tabs are either side of the slot at the bottom of the panel.


I then supported the panel horizontally on the top shelf so that I didn't have to disconnect the thermostat wire and the circulating fan wire.
With a small fan heater set on low, aimed roughly at the ice buildup on the left hand side of the evaporator coil, I defrosted the ice built up. This took around 2 hours or so. Then put it all back together and it worked fine.

I'm not sure why the ice build up on the side caused the problem, but presumably it interferes with the proper flow of cold air to the fridge compartment.

If you don't seem to have ice build up like I did, then it could be a thermostat problem, or a fan problem (a symptom of which would be fridge being colder at the bottom than at the top).

Had the same problem. I noticed that the fan in the freezer never shut off so I suspected the thermostat. I ordered and installed a new thermostat (about $30 and 15 minutes to install), the fan now cycles correctly and the ice build up is gone.

First of all, is it ice or frost? If it is ice, I would say you have a leaky water valve to icemaker, running down evap. coils. Replace water valve. If you have frost-find out why it is not defrosting(defrost heater, defrost thermostat, or defrost timer.

you have a defrost problem there are three compontes to the defrost systems the defrost thermostat the defrost timer and the defrost heater now when you open the freezer door you should hear a fan running now bear with me on the lower left hand side of your freezer compartment around where the wheel is at the bottom of the cabinet you should see a round hole where a strange plastic screw head is turn that slowly to the right till the freezer fan stops now the timer is in defrost in your freezer compartment remove the lower panel and you will see the evaporator looks like an aluminum honey comb now you will see a heating element like in a stove that's your defrost heater and clipped on one of the tubes you will see a small dome shaped disc one wire coming from fridge one wire going to the heater element ok if you turned the defrost timer till the fan stopped and by this time the element isn't on then take the defrost thermostat out of the loop by un plugging the fridge for safety then unplug the defrost thermostat from the heater and the other side from the fridge .Plug the heater to the fridge where you unplugged the thermostat and if the heater comes on after plugging the fridge back up you have a bad defrost thermostat but for real folks the timer and thermostat usually fail close so close together i recommend just replacing them both at the same time . now while your chasing down the parts if you need to save your food can take a hair drier and after removing the back panel in the freezer melt all the ice there will work good for about 4 days before freezing again