A stand-alone freezer is usually the cheapest appliance to repair in a home, because there is no fresh-food side to balance. The control loop is simple, the parts are inexpensive, and most failures are mechanical rather than electronic. We service every brand of upright and chest freezer sold in the past forty years, including the ones nobody else will touch.
Most often the defrost timer has stuck, allowing the evaporator coil to frost over until it can no longer cool. Sometimes the door seal is broken. Less often the compressor is dying. We diagnose by pulling the back panel and checking the coil for frost first.
Chest freezer compressors run a start relay that mounts to the compressor body. The relay is the single most-failed part on a chest freezer. We carry universal start relays for the most common compressor sizes. Easy thirty-minute repair.
Door seal failure, almost always. Cold air leaks out; warm humid air leaks in; the humidity condenses on the cold walls and freezes. The seal is replaceable on uprights for $80 to $150 in parts; on chests it is sometimes glued in place and is more involved.
The mechanical thermostat is the original cold control. When it fails closed, the compressor runs forever; failed open, it never runs. We test with a multimeter and replace.
Defrost drain plug missing or clogged. Pull the plug, drain the pan, replace if cracked.
| Repair | Typical total |
|---|---|
| Start relay replacement (chest freezer) | $135 to $195 |
| Defrost timer (upright) | $185 to $265 |
| Cold control thermostat | $155 to $215 |
| Door seal replacement | $165 to $245 |
| Compressor replacement (upright) | $540 to $890 |
| Compressor replacement (chest) | $420 to $720 |
Chest freezers are almost always worth repairing. They are simple machines, the parts are cheap, and replacement is $400 to $600 for an equivalent size. Uprights are a closer call; if the compressor is gone and the unit is over eight years old, replacement usually wins. We will run the numbers with you on the phone.
If your unit is a refrigerator and freezer combination, see refrigerator repair. If your problem is the ice maker specifically and the freezer otherwise works fine, the ice maker repair page covers that subsystem in depth.
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