The spare refrigerator lives in the garage because that is where there is room for it. It works beautifully for eight months and then, somewhere around the second week of July, the freezer softens and the ice cream will not set. Nothing has been touched.
Read the rating plate
Almost every refrigerator carries a climate class specifying the ambient range it was designed to work in. A great many domestic units top out around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. A closed Houston garage in July reaches 110 without difficulty and holds it for hours.
Above that range two things happen at once. Heat has nowhere to go once the surrounding air is that warm, so the compressor never stops and still falls behind. And the compressor itself is running in an ambient its own cooling was never designed for, which is how a unit that would have lasted fourteen years fails at eight.
Why the freezer suffers first
On a single-evaporator refrigerator, the thermostat that decides when to run sits in the fresh food compartment. In extreme ambient it never stops calling, so the compressor never stops – which sounds like it should help the freezer and does not, because the condenser is saturated and the system is making very little cold for all that running.
The two things that work
- Cool the space. Even partial garage ventilation or a mini-split brings the ambient inside the rating. This is the real fix.
- Buy a garage-ready unit. They exist, they are specified for exactly this, and they are the correct answer when the garage cannot be conditioned.
What does not work is leaving it and hoping for October. Four months a year of continuous running in an over-temperature ambient is what kills these units, and the problem when it comes is usually the compressor.
If a garage unit has already stopped rather than merely struggled, it is worth a look before you replace it. Call (844) 398-4960.
