I live in a brand new apartment, with all new GE appliances. We keep thermometers in our refrigerator to monitor the temperature levels. About 4 months ago we noticed that the freezer section of our refrigerator was warming up to 55 degrees, and then taking up to an hour to return to normal freezer levels. The refrigerator section also went up to 45 degrees. It did this exactly once a day. When this happened all of our food in the freezer melted to thaw levels and ice cream was soft or goopy. There was no way we could purchase frozen food to keep longer than a few days, as everything iced over horribly from thawing and re-freezing.

I've done some research and came to the conclusion that it must be something to do with the defrost heater or thermostat. The problem is this: the repairman tried to fix various things and nothing changed; nothing fixed the problem. Our apartment gave us a new-used GE refrigerator last week (model# GTS18GBSARWW - different model than previous one), and the exact same thing is happening with this model.

Tonight I opened the freezer and noticed the defrost heater element glowing bright red in the back of the freezer behind the vent slats, and when I put my hand up to it there was truly heater-warm hot air being emitted through the vents, which explains why the freezer heats up from -10 to 55 degrees in less than 20 minutes.

Can someone explain the logic of a freezer defrosting once each day and subsequently melting everything in the freezer? Is this problem unique to GE refrigerator/freezers?

I despise GE right now...I want a real refrigerator that will keep my frozen food frozen, and my cold food cold.

Before this started happening, did it work fine? All frost-free refrigerators have a defrost heater that glows bright red/orange, most don't notice it because they have alot of food in it, or they don't open the door at the time its doing it.

How much food do you keep in your freezer?

Jake

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Hi Lillian, first of all apartment buildings save as much money on their appliances as they can, more money for them. But it wil either be the defrost thermostat (part number wr50x10071) or the defrost timer (part number wr09x10049). but when i looked up the parts the thermostat number had changed once, this means it's been updated and the newer part number will be better (hopefully).
The main point is this, the defrost thermostat is responsible for keeping your freezer from becoming an oven by limiting the temperature and shutting off the heater when it reaches a preset temperature, since this is not happening, I would look for a failed thermostat, that is, have the apartment building maintenance look for one.