Beko fridge - auto defrost not working

[finnkiwi]

Hi,

We have a frost free combi, Beko Fridge / Freezer (Model CDA 543 F). It is two and a half years old. Recently the auto defrost functioning has stopped working, and the back wall of the fridge frosts up with thich ice. We have to hack the ice manually every two weeks or so, as it gets too thick for shelves. We have done what the manual instructs us (i.e. checked the drain tube, which seems to be clear; and reduced the setting to restart automatic defrosting), with no success. The freezer is working fine.

Any ideas what we could try? Thank you in advance.

 

[big-all]

do you give it a full 24hrs to defrost to clear all the internal channels [you cant see these]

 

[finnkiwi]

Thanks for your reply. We haven't tried that yet, but will give it a try once we get some of the food eaten! Will post again then.

 

[WLSM10]

Hi finnkiwi,

Did unplugging for 24hrs work? We have the same problem with our Beko.

 

[Leccy758]

If the fridge is constantly freezing up it is possibly the thermostat or more often nowadays the PCB failed.

 

[WLSM10]

Hiya,

What is the PCB? how do I know if that's the problem? Can I fix it?

 

[finnkiwi]

Hi,

We haven't managed to do the 24h defrost, due to not wanting to waste food (and I have lots of homemade jam that I wouldn't know what to do with). The frosting of the back wall it's still a problem, but now that we have let it get really thick, it doesn't seem to be getting any thicker. It probably reached its thickest point after 3 weeks, and is staying at that. It's obviously not ideal, or a long-term solution, but at the moment, we are not doing anything about it.

 

[Leccy758]

Just a really quick thought is the door seal making all round properly

 

[sheer1delight]

My larder fridge of 17 years vintage started to do this. I was about to condemn it to scrapheap as new thermostat seemed prohibitively expensive. By chance I took it out from under the worktop. I vaccuumed the coils that dissipate the heat and also the fanblades that circulates the air across them as these coils are under this fridge. The coils seemed to have very little fluff/dust on them but within 24 hours it was performing as good as new. Foryears I had put up with increasing amounts of ice on the rear of thefridge.Coud not believe that this simple action could make such a difference.

 

[WLSM10]

Seal seems to be strong all round.

What does seem odd, it could be like this all the time, but I haven't noticed, is that the part of the fridge where it the bottom of the door seals is quite warm to touch. The freezer compartment which seems fine is on the bottom - it could be heat transfer from here.

Also, around the outlay hole on the back for the auto-defrost is the one area that isn't frosting up, it's the beside it and the top of the back that frost up pretty quickly.

 

[shawburn]

A quick fix if the fridge freezer is working ok but the auto defrost is not is to connect it to the mains via a 24hr timer.
All you have to do is set it to come on for 15mins then of for 30 mins.
Do this with all the sections of the timer till you reach the beginning of the cycle again.
Its rtrial and error if its too cold lengthen the off time by 5 mins or if not cold enough then lengthen the on time.
Hope this helps. It did for me.

 

[ericmark]

I have been monitoring my freezer and fridge freezer for some time to collect data the old Beko actually stated heater size think about 175W but new Samsung does not have it down on the plate.

Run watts normally around 50W with a peak wattage of 275W as to if the peak is the power used to start motor or size of heater I don't know. But I think likely it is heater size. I have never managed to catch it on a de-frost cycle so it must be infrequent and short.

The power usage is around the 250 kWh/annum measured you could not get this if the heater is used too often. At 3 to 5 times more power to heater than motor I would guess on once every 24 hours if even that.

I never had a problem with Beko or Samsung on defrost but did with Hoover. The small pipe froze and the guy who came to repair it put a bit of copper wire down the hole to transmit the de-frost heat down the hole to keep it clear and this worked.

If you can empty freezer and do a manual defrost then if ice is blocking the hole this should melt and it will start working again as it should. But of course it must be fully defrosted to ensure the hole is cleared.

I use a fan blowing are into the freezer to speed things up. Normally there is a tray on the motor to collect the water and the heat from the motor will evaporate the water in the tray. If you monitor the tray you will know when the hole is clear as water will fall into the tray.

I did a quick calculation and with a 175W heater if one for 19% of the time it would use as much as the freezer uses in total so the heater has to be on far less than 19% of the time. I would guess more like 1% of the time so this would be 14.4 minutes every 24 hours.

I can now confirm the Samsung fridge/freezer uses 200W on the defrost. The 275W was on the Samsung freezer which it would seem likely also the defrost valve. So it would seem at least with an inverter drive freezer using a plug in energy meter can show you the defrost elements have activated.