So it’s Friday afternoon and you go to pull out some T-bones from the freezer to thaw for grilling tonight with good friends and Michelob only to discover that there are these weird freakin’ ice crystals all over everything in your freezer. The steaks are still frozen and you *hope* they’ve been frozen all along but what’s with the frost all over your stuff?

Couple thangs could be going on here, Hoss. First, listen to the fan in the freezer with the door closed. Listen real good for a while, press your ear up against the door if’n you need to. Does that fan sound steady or is it ramping up and down in speed? If it’s hunting around then you need to replace the Muthaboard ‘cuz it’s sending unsteady voltage to the fan.

Awwite, so the fan sounds steady, no weirdness going on there. Now what? Well, Imma tellya so hang on to yo britches.

Here’s today’s psychrometrics lesson: in a freezer environment, repeated thaw and freeze cycles will form ice crystals on solid surfaces.

“Why is that, Captain Ron?”

Well, nobody knows. All I know is that in these GE refrigamerators, with all that fancy-ass electronified boolsheet, that if the defrost thermistor is the old-style and the freezer fan is running on low speed all the time, the defrost cycle will be controlled by the hi-limit safety thermostat and not by Mr. Thermistor.

So, what does this mean? No, he is NOT the freakin’ Kwisatz Haderach.

It means the freezer has been getting waaay too warm during defrost and making everything in there wet and clamy ‘cuz it was heating up until the high limit finally kicked out the heating element. Then when the compressor turns back on and starts cooling everything down with the fan blowing, all that water vapor desublimates directly to a solid. (Did you like that one, “desublimates?” Oh yeah, we professional appliantologists know all about that fancy scientifical stuff. That’s why we makes the big money! )

Make sure you have the new, upgraded thermistors in your GE fridge. If not, do it now.

Kinda makes you think twice about eating those T-bones tonight, da tovarish? Can you say salmonella?

Still confoosed Grasshoppah? Come start a new topic in the Kitchen appliance repair forum and we’ll straighten yo azz right out.

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