Table of Contents
The short answer
A fridge that runs but is not cold has usually lost one of three things: its power or its setting, its seal against the warm room, or its way of getting rid of heat. That gives a short list of checks, all made with your eyes, the controls and a vacuum cleaner: the socket and the thermostat, the door seals, how the shelves are loaded, the dust on the coils or grille, the gap around the cabinet, the frost in the freezer, and how hot the room is.
Most take a minute or two. Two of them, cleaning the coils and defrosting, are done with the fridge switched off at the socket and unplugged. None involves removing a panel. If the checks change nothing, what is left is inside the cooling circuit or the electronics: the refrigerant, the compressor, the fans and the control board. Those belong to a technician.
Look after the food before the fridge. Keep both doors shut while you work out what is wrong, and when in doubt about anything perishable, throw it away. If you smell burning, the breaker trips, or the fridge clicks every few minutes without starting, unplug it and call. IHR Dream Cleaning checks cooling faults, noises and door seals through its home appliance repair service, with the price confirmed before any repair starts.
How a fridge keeps cold, and what the pattern tells you
A fridge does not make cold. It moves heat. Refrigerant picks up heat inside the cabinet at a cold coil called the evaporator, the compressor pumps it round, and the heat is given off to the kitchen at a second coil called the condenser. On older fridges the condenser is the black grid on the back. On many newer ones it is underneath, behind a grille at floor level, or built into the side walls.
So a fridge warms up for one of three reasons. Heat is getting in faster than it should: a seal that does not grip, a door left ajar, a load of warm food. Heat cannot get out: dust on the condenser, no air gap, a room hotter than the fridge was built for. Or the machinery that moves the heat has stopped: no power, a wrong setting, ice choking the evaporator, a failed fan, a compressor or refrigerant fault.
In a frost-free fridge-freezer, which is what most homes have, the cold is made in the freezer and a small fan blows some of it through a vent into the fridge compartment. That explains a pattern that puzzles many owners: a freezer that still freezes beside a fridge that has gone warm.
| What you find | What it usually points to | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| No light, no sound | No power reaching the fridge | Plug, socket, breaker |
| Light works, never any hum | A setting, a demo or holiday mode, or a control fault | Settings, then call |
| Freezer cold, fridge warm | Blocked vent, ice on the evaporator or a failed fan | Loading, then frost |
| Both warm, compressor never rests | Dusty coils, hot room, poor seal or a sealed-system fault | Coils, clearance, seals |
| A click every few minutes, no hum | Compressor failing to start | Unplug and call |
First, protect the food and measure the temperature
Each time the door opens, cold air falls out and warm, humid air takes its place. A struggling fridge cannot afford that, so open the door once and close it. If you have a second fridge, a neighbour with space, or a cool box and ice, move the meat, fish, dairy and cooked leftovers now and not after an hour of testing.
Then find out how warm it really is. The inside of a fridge feels cool to a warm hand even when it is too warm for food. Stand a fridge thermometer in a glass of water on the middle shelf, close the door, and read it after a few hours. Water gives a steadier reading than air, which swings whenever the door opens. The usual target is about 4 °C in the fridge compartment and −18 °C in the freezer; the official source for those figures is linked in the food section below. Write down both readings and the time. A technician will ask for them.
Signs that mean unplug it and call
With any of these, switch off at the socket, pull the plug out and leave it out. A fridge in this state does not recover by being left on.
- A burning or hot-plastic smell, smoke, or a plug or socket that is hot, brown or melted.
- The breaker or earth-leakage switch trips when the fridge is plugged in or when the compressor starts.
- A click from the back every few minutes, sometimes with a brief hum, and no steady running sound after it.
- Water reaching the plug, the socket or an extension lead on the floor.
- A sharp chemical smell, or an oily patch behind or under the fridge.
What stays out of bounds
The checks in this guide stop at the surfaces you can already see. Five things are never part of them.
- Removing the cover over the compressor at the bottom of the back, or any panel inside the freezer.
- Chipping at ice with a knife or a screwdriver. The evaporator is thin tubing, and one puncture lets the refrigerant out and ends the fridge. Many modern fridges use a flammable refrigerant, which is a second reason.
- Speeding a defrost with a hair dryer or a heater. Mains appliances and meltwater do not belong together, and the plastic lining warps.
- Running the fridge from a coiled extension lead, or from an adaptor shared with a kettle or a microwave.
- Switching it off and straight back on. The compressor needs time for its pressures to settle, so wait about ten minutes before you plug in again.
Check the power and the settings
Is the fridge getting power?
Open the door. If the light comes on, the fridge has power and you can move on. If it does not, and there is no hum and no display, check that the plug is pushed fully home and the socket switch is on. Then test the socket with something small that you know works, such as a phone charger or a lamp.
If the socket is dead, look at the distribution board and reset a tripped breaker once. If it trips again, leave it off and unplug the fridge: either the fridge or the circuit has a fault, and the way to tell them apart is in tripping breakers, flickering lights and warm sockets. A socket that is dead, warm, scorched or loose is work for our electrical service, not for an appliance technician.
The thermostat and the modes
Find the temperature control. On a numbered dial a higher number is normally colder, but not on every model, so check the manual before you turn it. Dials sit inside the fridge where a bottle or a hand can knock them to the warmest setting, or to zero, which on some fridges is off. On a digital panel, put the set temperatures back to the maker's recommendation.
Then look for a mode nobody chose. Many fridges have a holiday setting that lets the fridge compartment run warm while the freezer carries on, and some have a showroom or demo mode in which the lights and the display work and the cooling does not. Both are cancelled with a button combination given in the manual.
After any change, wait. A fridge full of food takes many hours to come down, and turning the dial to maximum does not cool it faster. It only overshoots later and freezes the lettuce.
After a power cut, a move or a clean behind it
After a power cut the compressor may wait several minutes before it restarts. After a move, a fridge that travelled on its side or steeply tilted should stand upright for some hours before it is switched on, so that the oil can drain back into the compressor; the manual gives the time for your model. And after any clean behind it, check that it was plugged back in and switched on, which is easy to forget.
Doors, seals and how the fridge is loaded
The door seal and the paper test
The rubber seal round each door is the only thing between the cold inside and a warm, humid kitchen. Test it with a strip of paper. Close the door on the paper so that half is inside, and pull. You should feel the seal grip. If the paper slides out with no resistance, the seal is not touching the cabinet at that point. Repeat every hand's width round the door, hinge side included, and on the freezer door too.
A seal that fails the test is often just dirty. Spilled juice and crumbs make it sticky, so it drags, folds or pulls out of its groove. Wash it with warm water and a little washing-up liquid, open out the folds, dry it and test again. A seal that is split, hardened or flattened for good needs replacing, and our service page counts a faulty door seal among the straightforward repairs.
A door that does not quite close
A bottle standing proud of a shelf, a drawer not pushed home or a bag caught at the hinge holds the door open by a few millimetres, which is enough. Heavy bottles in the door shelves drag the door down over time. A fridge that leans forward lets the door drift open after you have walked away. Most are meant to stand level or lean back very slightly so that the door falls shut, and the front feet screw up and down to set that.
The signs of a door that has been leaking air are beads of water on the shelves and the ceiling of the fridge compartment, and a coat of frost just inside the freezer door. In Abu Dhabi's humid months that moisture arrives quickly.
Overfilling and blocked vents
Cold air has to travel. In a frost-free fridge it enters through a slotted vent, usually at the back of the top shelf or in a column down the back wall. A cake box, a tray of drinks or a bag of salad pushed against that vent stops the circulation, and the result is a fridge that is icy at the top back and warm everywhere else. Keep a hand's width clear in front of the vents, leave gaps between items, and do not line the shelves with foil or trays, which stop the air dropping through. The same applies in the freezer: packed solid to the back wall, it cannot send cold air on to the fridge.
A big, warm load
A week's shopping that sat in a hot car, a dozen bottles of water at room temperature or a pot of hot food is a great deal of heat to remove, and the fridge may read several degrees high for the rest of the day. This is normal and it passes. It often happens before a gathering, when the fridge is filled to the door in one go. Chill drinks in batches, and let cooked food stop steaming before it goes in without leaving it standing out for long.
Letting the heat out: coils, clearance and the room
All the heat taken out of the food leaves through the condenser. If the condenser is wrapped in dust, boxed in by cabinets or standing in a very hot room, the compressor runs without rest and the inside warms up. Our appliance repair pages note that cleaning fridge coils every few months prevents many repair calls. The washing machine's equivalent job, the pump filter, is described in a washing machine that will not drain or spin.
Vacuum the coils or the grille
First find your condenser, from the manual or by looking. A black grid on the back or a grille at floor level needs vacuuming. If the manual says the condenser is inside the walls, there is no coil to clean, only the grille over the compressor space at the bottom of the back. Fine dust settles on all of them quickly here, and pet hair mats it together.
- Switch off at the socket and pull the plug out. Keep the doors shut. The food will hold for the ten minutes this takes.
- Clear the top of the fridge and slide it straight forward far enough to reach behind. It is heavy, so get help, protect a soft floor, and do not strain the water pipe on a fridge with an ice maker or dispenser.
- Vacuum the grid or the grille with a soft brush attachment, working along the tubes and not across the thin fins. Lift the dust off the floor underneath as well.
- On a floor-level grille, unclip the kick plate only if the manual shows that it comes off by hand, and vacuum as far in as the brush reaches. Do not push the nozzle in blind.
- Leave the cover over the compressor in place, and use no water or spray.
- Slide the fridge back, leaving the gap described next, wait about ten minutes, then plug in and switch on.
Clearance
A fridge needs air to pass behind it and away at the top, and the manual gives the gaps for your model. Fridges get pushed hard against the wall after cleaning, or roofed over with trays and shopping bags until the hot air cannot rise away. A built-in fridge breathes through a grille in the plinth and another at the top of its housing, and both must be open and free of dust. Models that give off heat through their side walls need space at the sides too.
A room that is too hot for the fridge
Every fridge is built for a range of room temperatures, shown on its rating plate as a climate class. If the room is hotter than the top of that range, the fridge cannot shed heat fast enough, however healthy it is.
An air-conditioned kitchen is inside every class. A balcony, an outdoor kitchen, a garage or a store room without air conditioning is not. In an Abu Dhabi summer those spaces can reach or pass the limit of even a tropical-class fridge in the afternoon, and direct sun on the cabinet adds to it. A second fridge kept there runs constantly, cools poorly by day and recovers at night. The cure is not a repair. Move it into a cooled, or at least shaded and ventilated, space, or accept that in summer it is for drinks and not for meat and dairy.
| Class on the plate | Built for rooms up to |
|---|---|
| N (temperate) | 32 °C |
| ST (subtropical) | 38 °C |
| T (tropical) | 43 °C |
A home left with the air conditioning off
The same happens indoors when a home is closed for weeks in summer with the cooling switched off: the kitchen becomes the hot room. If the fridge stays on while you travel, leave it lightly loaded, or empty it and switch it off with the doors propped open. A fridge that was off, or lost power, while you were away is covered in reopening a home after summer travel.
Frost and ice: when to defrost, and what frost is telling you
Frost is an insulator. A thin white bloom on a freezer wall is harmless. A thick crust on the cooling surface stops it taking heat out of the air, and a block of ice round the evaporator stops the air moving at all.
Fridges and freezers that are defrosted by hand
Simpler fridges, many single-door models and chest freezers have no automatic defrost in the freezer. Ice builds on the walls or the plate, faster in humid weather and with every long door opening. As a rule of thumb, defrost when the frost is about half a centimetre thick, or sooner if the drawers stick and the door will not shut cleanly.
- Move the food to another freezer, or pack it tightly in a cool box with ice and cover it with a folded towel.
- Switch off at the socket, pull the plug out and prop the doors open.
- Put towels on the floor and a tray on the bottom shelf to catch the meltwater.
- Let the ice melt. A bowl of hot water placed inside with the door pushed to speeds it up. Replace the water as it cools.
- Lift away slabs of ice as they come loose by themselves. Use only the plastic scraper supplied with the fridge, never a blade.
- Wipe the inside dry, door seals included, then plug in and switch on. Put the food back once the freezer is cold again.
Frost in a frost-free fridge
A frost-free fridge-freezer defrosts itself: a small heater melts the frost off the hidden evaporator at intervals, and the water runs away to a tray near the compressor. If you see a sheet of frost on the back panel inside the freezer, or the fridge compartment has gone warm while the freezer still freezes, that system has stopped coping. Either a door was left ajar and humid air poured in, or a part of the defrost circuit has failed and the evaporator has frozen into a block that no air can pass.
You can find out which, safely. Empty the fridge, switch it off at the socket, unplug it, and leave both doors open for a full day with towels on the floor. This melts ice that you cannot see or reach. Dry it, switch on, and give it a day to settle. If it then cools normally for months, an open door was the cause. If the fridge compartment warms up again within a week or two, the automatic defrost has failed, and that is a repair to book. Tell the technician how long the improvement lasted.
What to do with the food
The safe rule is short: keep the doors shut, and when in doubt, throw it out. Food that has warmed up does not always look or smell wrong, so neither is a test, and tasting is not one either.
For a sense of how long you have, the US Food and Drug Administration's guidance on food safety during power cuts, as published in October 2026, says that an unopened fridge keeps food cold for about four hours, and that a full freezer holds its temperature for about 48 hours, or 24 hours if it is half full, with the door closed. It advises discarding refrigerated perishable food that has been above 40 °F, about 4 °C, for four hours or more, and says that frozen food which still contains ice crystals can be refrozen or cooked. The same page gives the targets used earlier in this guide: a fridge at or below 40 °F and a freezer at or below 0 °F, about −18 °C.
Treat those figures as the outside limit. They describe a working fridge that lost power with its door shut. A fridge that has been failing slowly has no clear starting time, and one standing in a hot room warms faster. If you cannot say how long the food has been warm, treat it as too long.
- Throw away if in doubt: raw and cooked meat, poultry, fish and seafood, milk, laban, yoghurt, soft cheese, cooked rice and leftovers, opened baby food, cut fruit and prepared salads.
- Whole, uncut fruit and vegetables and unopened long-life products are far less sensitive than anything in that list.
- Frozen food that has thawed completely and warmed up should be thrown away, not refrozen.
- If you keep medicine in the fridge, insulin for example, ask your pharmacist whether it can still be used. Do not guess.
While you wait for a repair
If the fridge is cooling weakly, keep the door shut and move the perishables out. If it is not cooling at all, empty it, switch it off, wipe it dry and prop the doors open. A closed, warm, switched-off fridge grows mould within days, and the smell gets into the plastic lining.
When it needs a technician
If all of that has been ruled out, the fault is in a part you cannot reach or should not touch. Our service page describes how a fridge that is not cooling is checked: at the thermostat, the door seal and the compressor, to find where the fault actually is. The table shows what the common findings usually mean.
| What you notice | Part usually involved | Kind of repair |
|---|---|---|
| Frost returns within weeks of a full defrost | Defrost heater, sensor or timer | A replaceable part |
| Freezer cold, fridge warm, no air from the vent | Fan or air damper | A replaceable part |
| Wrong temperature whatever the setting | Thermostat or temperature sensor | A replaceable part |
| Clicks and fails to start | Start relay, or the compressor itself | Needs testing to tell |
| Runs non-stop, back barely warm, no cooling | Refrigerant leak or a worn compressor | Sealed-system work |
| Display dead or erratic, power is fine | Control board | Depends on the part |
Why a fridge cannot simply be regassed
The refrigerant is sealed into the pipework for life. It is not used up, so a fridge that is short of gas has a leak, and adding gas without finding and repairing the leak only delays the same failure. Opening that circuit, repairing it and recharging it takes training and equipment, and on many fridges the gas is flammable. It is never a household job.
It is also where the cost of the repair has to be weighed against the fridge. A fan, a sensor or a door seal on a sound fridge is nearly always worth doing. A compressor, or a leak inside the cabinet walls of an old fridge, may not be. How to make that call is set out in repair or replace: a practical rule for washing machines, fridges and ovens.
What the sounds tell you
A low hum that comes and goes is the compressor, and a gurgle, a hiss or a trickle is refrigerant and defrost water moving. A whirr inside the freezer that stops when you open the door is the fan. All are normal. A fan that rattles, squeals or has gone silent while the fridge compartment warms is worth reporting, and so is a click from the back with no hum following it. Record a short video with sound: a noise is hard to describe and easy to recognise.
Booking a repair: what to send and what to expect
A technician who knows the model and the pattern of the fault can arrive with the likely parts. The guide on how to get an accurate repair quote shows which photos help for any repair. For a fridge, send these when you book.
- The brand and model number, as a photo of the plate. It is usually on an inside wall of the fridge compartment, low down by the drawers.
- The type: single door, freezer on top, freezer below, side by side or built in, and whether it is frost-free.
- Which compartment is warm, the thermometer readings, and when the trouble started.
- Whether the compressor runs, any click, buzz or new noise, and where frost or water has appeared.
- Which checks you have made, including a full defrost and what happened afterwards.
- Where the fridge stands, especially on a balcony or in a store room, and its rough age.
- Whether the home is rented and the fridge came with it.
On the day
Clear the top of the fridge and the floor in front of it. Appliance repair needs room to pull the appliance out from the wall and access to its power connection, and to the water connection on a model with a dispenser.
The technician inspects the fridge directly and does not work from the symptom alone. Once the fault is confirmed, you are given a quote for parts and labour before the repair goes ahead. Where the part is available, the repair is done on the same visit. A compressor or control-board fault may need a part ordered, and you are then given a timeline for the second visit. The fridge is run and checked before the technician leaves, and you are told what caused the fault. A fridge takes hours to pull down to temperature, so keep the thermometer in it and read it the next morning.
What it costs
Appliance repair has no published price list, because the same warm fridge can need a door seal or a compressor. It is quoted by the appliance and the fault after inspection, and the published factors are the type and brand, the fault, whether parts are available for that model, and the age of the appliance. Inspection is free in every area we serve, there is no call-out fee, and the price does not change on a Friday or a public holiday. All prices include VAT.
Payment is by card online. For a quoted job you pay online from My bookings on this website once the price is confirmed, and jobs of AED 1,000 or more take a 30% advance by that link, with the balance after the work.
Common questions about a fridge that is not cooling
How long does a fridge take to get cold again?
Longer than most people expect. An empty fridge switched on from warm needs several hours before it is cold enough for food, and a loaded one can take a full day to settle at its set temperature. Judge it by the thermometer the next morning, not by how the air feels after an hour, and put the food back in stages.
The fridge runs all the time. Is that a fault?
Not by itself. Many newer fridges have compressors designed to run for long periods at low speed, and any fridge runs more in summer, after a big shop and when the door is opened often. It becomes a symptom when the fridge runs without a pause and is still not cold. Then go through the coils, the clearance, the seals and the room temperature before suspecting the machine.
The sides of the fridge feel hot. Is that normal?
On many models, yes. Where the condenser is built into the walls, the sides and the strip between the doors get warm, noticeably so in hot weather or after loading. That is the fridge getting rid of heat. Sides too hot to keep a hand on, together with poor cooling, mean the heat is not getting away. Check the clearance and the room before you call.
There is water under the salad drawers. Is that connected?
It is a neighbouring problem. Defrost water runs down the back wall of the fridge compartment into a small channel and out through a drain hole. Crumbs and bits of leaf block that hole, and the water then runs forward under the drawers. Most manuals show the owner how to clear it, often with a small plastic tool clipped inside the fridge. Water on the floor behind or under the fridge is different, and should be looked at.
Who pays for the repair in a rented home?
Check the tenancy contract before you approve anything. If the fridge was supplied with the home, tell the landlord or the managing agent and ask, in writing, who arranges the repair. If the fridge is yours, so is the decision. A tax invoice is available on request for any booking.
Can someone come today?
Share the appliance type and the fault when you book and we confirm the earliest technician available. We work every day from 8 AM – 8 PM. If the fridge holds medicine, or a full freezer is at stake, say so at the start, or phone +971 52 723 5299.
When the checks have not brought the cold back
If the fridge has power, the settings are right, the seals grip, the vents and coils are clear and the room is not the problem, stop there. Every remaining cause is behind a panel.
Our home appliance repair page explains how fridges and fridge-freezers are diagnosed, and the areas we serve are listed on the site. Book a visit on the website or in the IHR Dream app, add the photos and the thermometer readings, and the price is confirmed with you before any repair starts. You can cancel or move the booking free of charge up to 6 hours before the start time.
