Why does ice freeze on the back wall in the refrigerator and what to do?

If ice freezes on the back wall in the refrig­er­a­tor, then often this indi­cates improp­er oper­a­tion of the house­hold appli­ance or the pres­ence of mal­func­tions of one kind or anoth­er. To find out the cause of ice freez­ing, you can call a repair­man or try to fig­ure it out your­self.

Cooling mode set incorrectly

If it freezes on the back wall of the refrig­er­a­tor, then you should imme­di­ate­ly check which cool­ing mode is set in the refrig­er­a­tor com­part­ment. As in the case of air con­di­tion­ing, you should not wind up the cool­ing as much as pos­si­ble in hot sum­mer weath­er.

There is an erro­neous opin­ion that at high air tem­per­a­tures, the refrig­er­a­tor should be as cold as pos­si­ble. But the tem­per­a­ture inside the refrig­er­a­tor and out­side is not con­nect­ed in any way, if the cham­ber is not sealed. There­fore, it is worth doing the oppo­site, and in hot weath­er, slight­ly increase the tem­per­a­ture in order to pro­tect the unit from over­load due to oper­a­tion at the max­i­mum of its capa­bil­i­ties and to exclude ice freez­ing in the cham­ber.

Solenoid valve failure

The sole­noid valve is respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing the cool­ing in a two-cham­ber refrig­er­a­tor. And its mal­func­tion may be the rea­son why the back wall of the refrig­er­a­tor freezes. The valve auto­mat­i­cal­ly cools the cham­ber that needs it most at the moment.

Ice on the back wall of the refrig­er­a­tor often appears when the valve trans­fers resources only to the refrig­er­a­tor com­part­ment. Along with the fact that the wall is cov­ered with ice, the freez­er may defrost, so such a mal­func­tion must be fixed imme­di­ate­ly.

Read also:

Blockage in the capillary pipeline

Often the pipes through which the refrig­er­ant cir­cu­lates have some rough­ness. With such a struc­ture, var­i­ous impu­ri­ties can accu­mu­late in an uneven place, which leads to par­tial block­age. In this con­di­tion, ice builds up on the back wall, and the tem­per­a­ture in the refrig­er­a­tor com­part­ment ris­es.

Faulty defrost sensor

The defrost sen­sor is respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the tem­per­a­ture in the refrig­er­a­tor so that the food does not dete­ri­o­rate and snow or ice does not appear. The sen­sor can break itself, like any oth­er mech­a­nism. It can also cease to per­form its func­tions if the tech­nique is not used cor­rect­ly.

It is not for noth­ing that the user man­u­al states that you should not put hot food and dish­es in the refrig­er­a­tor, as well as keep the door open for a long time. This leads to the fact that the tem­per­a­ture in the cham­ber ris­es, and the sen­sor does not turn on the defrost mode. The first thing to do is to forcibly defrost the unit, that is, turn it off from the pow­er sup­ply and let the ice melt. After all the ice has dis­ap­peared, the refrig­er­a­tor com­part­ment must be wiped dry and turned on.

If these time inter­vals are not saved, then most like­ly the sen­sor is already defec­tive and needs to be repaired or replaced. You can replace the sen­sor your­self, but it is bet­ter to con­tact the repair­man, who may also repair the old mech­a­nism.

Wear of rubber seal

If the seal on the refrig­er­a­tor door is worn out, this leads to a vio­la­tion of the tight­ness of the refrig­er­a­tor com­part­ment. Warm air from the room enters the inte­ri­or of the cham­ber, which mis­leads the defrost sen­sor and sub­se­quent­ly forms ice on the wall.

The rub­ber band is usu­al­ly attached to the door with glue, screws or insert­ed into a spe­cial groove. You can see how to replace a worn seal your­self in this video instruc­tion:

If the seal was on the glue, then before glu­ing a new one, you need to care­ful­ly remove the rem­nants of the past glue and degrease the sur­face. You can also attach the sealant to the screws if the old rub­ber band was held in this way. It is not nec­es­sary to replace the screws with new ones. The doors of some mod­els of refrig­er­a­tors are equipped with a spe­cial groove into which the seal­ing gum is insert­ed. To replace it, you need to find exact­ly the same. After all, if the seal does not com­plete­ly lie in the groove, then the wall of the refrig­er­a­tor will still be cov­ered with snow.

Compressor overload

If the unit is often over­loaded with a large amount of prod­ucts that need to be cooled, then its com­pres­sor will work at the lim­it of its capa­bil­i­ties and will soon fail. The appear­ance of ice in the refrig­er­a­tor com­part­ment may be the first sig­nal of an over­load. That is why it is impor­tant to elim­i­nate the cause of what is freez­ing on the back wall in time. After all, replac­ing the com­pres­sor is a very expen­sive pro­ce­dure.

If the rea­son why an ice lay­er appeared on the back wall of the refrig­er­a­tor is in the state of the com­pres­sor, then here you can’t do with­out the help of a mas­ter. First you need to check the amount of refrig­er­ant. After all, if there is not enough coolant, the com­pres­sor is over­loaded. Injec­tion of refrig­er­ant requires spe­cial equip­ment and the sub­stance itself, which is not easy to buy, since it has cer­tain stor­age and oper­at­ing con­di­tions.

If you find out why ice freezes in the refrig­er­a­tor cham­ber, then the cause can be elim­i­nat­ed on your own. But it hap­pens that ice forms on the back wall of the refrig­er­a­tor as the first sign of a rather seri­ous mal­func­tion of the vital parts of the unit. Then you should not save and call a spe­cial­ist who will cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion and save the equip­ment.