Saw what 5 years of never cleaning the condenser coil does to a fridge compressor

Pulled a 10 year old Kenmore from a rental property last week and the condenser coil was basically a fur blanket, overheated the compressor so bad it cracked the discharge line right at the brazed joint, has anyone else seen that kind of damage from just neglected airflow?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor30512d ago

Half inch of dust and dog hair? Holy crap, that's insane. I've seen some nasty coils but a solid half inch blanket is wild, like the fridge was trying to breathe through a pillow. The windings shorting out from that kind of heat makes total sense though, once the compressor gets that hot everything inside turns to garbage. I bet the unit was running nonstop and still couldn't keep anything cold, just cooking itself to death over years of neglect. At least the discharge line cracking gave you an obvious failure point, I've seen compressors just silently die from heat stroke with no visible damage except being totally seized up. The compressed air idea is smart, I need to start doing that with my own stuff before I end up with a fur-covered paperweight.

kevin_schmidt9712d ago

Yeah I actually dealt with something pretty similar last year on a fridge in my buddy's rental. It wasn't a Kenmore but the compressor was running hot and the condenser was absolutely caked with dust and dog hair, like a solid half inch of it. I ended up having to replace the whole compressor because the windings were partially shorted from overheating, and the discharge line wasn't cracked but the high side was way out of spec on pressure. What finally worked for me was just making it a habit to hit the coils with compressed air every time I do a turnover on the property, even if it looks clean. I mean it's a pain but it beats having to buy a new fridge or compressor every few years, that's for sure.