Every year, from about November, we take calls about the spare refrigerator in the garage or the mudroom. The fridge section is cold. The freezer has gone soft. Nothing has been touched. It is almost never a problem.
Climate class, which nobody reads
Most refrigerators carry a rating specifying the ambient temperature range they were designed to operate in, and a good number of them are only rated down to around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. An unheated garage in Westchester is well below that from December onward.
Why the freezer is the one that suffers
On a single-evaporator refrigerator, the thermostat that decides when to run the compressor sits in the fresh food compartment. When the garage is at 40 degrees, that compartment is already cold enough, so the thermostat is satisfied and the compressor stays off. But the freezer relies on the same compressor. It never gets a run, and it slowly thaws.
So the classic winter error is the opposite of what people expect: the fridge is cold and the freezer is soft. Nothing is broken. The control is doing exactly what it was designed to do in an environment it was not designed for.
The two things that work
- Heat the space, even a little. Keeping an insulated garage above 60 solves it outright.
- Buy a garage-rated unit. They exist, they carry a heater or a second sensor for exactly this, and they are the correct answer if the space cannot be heated.
What does not work is a kit bought online to warm the thermostat. It makes the compressor run more, which is the goal, and it also makes it run in an ambient it was never rated for, which shortens its life. We do not recommend them.
If the freezer stays soft once the garage warms up, then something genuinely has failed and it is worth a look. Call 914-527-5055.
