I killed my freezer!

[Kev Williams]

The freezer is just a small 5 cu.ft upright 'Insignia' from Best Buy. It's only 15 months old...
Last week I took a phillips screwdriver to some built-up ice so I could get at some microwave snacks. Next thing I know everything is thawing out. Once all the ice melted, I found where I hit one of the cooling tubes with the screwdriver. Wasn't a sharp-tipped screwdriver, and at a glance it looks like only the paint was chipped off the tube but the depression is pretty deep, so I'm pretty sure the tube was penetrated and all the refrigerant escaped. When plugging in now, the compressor runs, but the cabinet temp just goes up...

So, can these tubes be soldered or otherwise repaired, and the system recharged? If so, for less that the $300 a new one will cost?

[Lee Schierer]

The tubes are probably aluminum. They can be repaired, but your cost is likely to be equal or greater than the cost of a new freezer. You will also need to pay someone to put in new refrigerant.

[Matt Day]

Next time eat faster.

My little deep freezer never piles up with ice/frost like that. It did come with a scraper though.

[Bill Orbine]

Where the gas was entered into the system, the tubes are probably pinched off and soldered. No valves. Something to think about

[Kev Williams]

I was pretty sure it's a done deal, but wasn't sure....

[John K Jordan]

The freezer is just a small 5 cu.ft upright 'Insignia' from Best Buy. It's only 15 months old...
Last week I took a phillips screwdriver to some built-up ice so I could get at some microwave snacks. Next thing I know everything is thawing out. Once all the ice melted, I found where I hit one of the cooling tubes with the screwdriver. Wasn't a sharp-tipped screwdriver, and at a glance it looks like only the paint was chipped off the tube but the depression is pretty deep, so I'm pretty sure the tube was penetrated and all the refrigerant escaped. When plugging in now, the compressor runs, but the cabinet temp just goes up...

So, can these tubes be soldered or otherwise repaired, and the system recharged? If so, for less that the $300 a new one will cost?

Bummer. I'd probably look for a new one. I put a flat blade screwdriver through the front of the radiator of a 1960 Ford pickup once but it was copper and I was able to fix it by soldering in a plug made from a short piece of 12 gauge copper wire.

Your freezer might make a nice refrigerator kiln for drying bowl blanks.

We de-ice by emptying the freezer, letting it warm up some, then use a plastic scraper. I use mild heat from an old hair dryer if needed.

JKJ

[Ole Anderson]

I did that to the mini fridge at work once...

[Tom M King]

What kind of refrigerant was in it? Did you figure out what metal the coil was?

[Ron Citerone]

IMO trash it, go buy another one and learn from the experience. Don't beat yourself up over it..............at least you didn't cut the Central Air line with a hedge trimmer.

[Jerome Stanek]

You could replace it for less then you could fix it for.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-5-0-cu-ft-chest-freezer-white/8390036.p?skuId=8390036

[Myk Rian]

.....at least you didn't cut the Central Air line with a hedge trimmer.
I'll bet that was fun.

[John K Jordan]

.........at least you didn't cut the Central Air line with a hedge trimmer.

For even more fun try cutting an 8" water main. A guy I hired to dig a driveway years ago didn't call before he dug. Made a fun geyser that made the front page of the newspaper, shot 160,000 gallons of water into the air.

JKJ

[Tom M King]

A friend of mine cut the natural gas line between the street, and their house with a garden tiller. Fortunately, there was no fire, but created a lot of excitement in the neighborhood. This was years before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, so maybe he learned something from the experience.

[John K Jordan]

A friend of mine cut the natural gas line between the street, and their house with a garden tiller. Fortunately, there was no fire, but created a lot of excitement in the neighborhood. This was years before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, so maybe he learned something from the experience.

I'm getting a bit old for that but maybe there's still time. I'll try cutting some gas, power, water, fiber optic, and sewer lines and try for a nobel. I did cut through an underground cable TV line but no world-wide recognition came from it yet.

JKJ

[Bill Dufour]

I had a Datsun with a glued ac evaporater. Glue looked like JB weld. I cleaned and gooped more JB weld onto it. never got it to seal for long. Finally bought a wrecking yard one. You would have to clean the oil off the leak, epoxy it with something . Pull a vacuum and add the correct amount of the correct oil and refrigerant. I would add a filter to remove the moisture in the system.
Buy a new unit.

[Jerome Stanek]

I was planting trees with a tree spade in a ladies back yard and I dug the hole where the tree was to go and went to get the tree. When I came back she was standing by the hole and said I cut her off her telephone call. I knew the phone line was buried but it should have come in from the road to the side of her house and I was way back from there. The phone company must have had a lot of cable because they went down one side of her property and then across the middle of the back yard the back down the other side and then into her house. I never figured out why the did this but when the phone company came back they just went from the road to the side that her Dmark was about 150 feet instead of 1000 feet.

[Steve Peterson]

A friend of mine cut the natural gas line between the street, and their house with a garden tiller. Fortunately, there was no fire, but created a lot of excitement in the neighborhood. This was years before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, so maybe he learned something from the experience.

Are you serious? Do you actually know a Nobel Prize winner? And was the gas line so close to the surface that a garden tiller could cut through it?

[Kev Williams]

What kind of refrigerant was in it? Did you figure out what metal the coil was?
R134A is the refrigerant, and the coil is copper- kinda weird, the coil enters the cabinet at 1/4" dia, snakes up to the top rack, then works its way down all the other racks (the coils ARE the racks), and exits at less than 1/8" dia...


You could replace it for less then you could fix it for.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-5-0-cu-ft-chest-freezer-white/8390036.p?skuId=8390036

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-5-3-cu-ft-upright-freezer-white/6112630.p?skuId=6112630#tabbed-customerreviews
^^ this is the one I have, and if I replace it, it must be with the same one, I literally don't have the floor space for a chest version!

--and I don't like talk about gas lines- about 25 years ago, a house down on the next street, maybe 8 houses worth away from me, one day they smelled gas. The gas company came in, 3 or 4 guys checked the whole place out with their noses and 'sniffers', came out and stated "all clear, we don't know what you smelled, but..." **BOOM!!**

Blew all the windows out and part of the outer walls, fire started-- and they didn't detect any gas. Fortunately the crew and everyone else was out by the street so nobody got hurt...

[Tom M King]

Are you serious? Do you actually know a Nobel Prize winner? And was the gas line so close to the surface that a garden tiller could cut through it? Actually several, and yes. It wasn't a joke.

[Tom M King]

Kev, I would braze it, with a patch over the bad place after opening up any pushed in, restricted part, and put R12A in it. That is, if you have access to a vacuum pump, and gauges. There should be a label somewhere on it that shows how much refrigerant it takes. I use a little digital scale. No problem putting R134a in it, but I'm not scared of R12a, and it's many times better for the environment. I'm running it in both of our old cars, and one tractor.

[Aaron Rosenthal]

Tom, every time I've tried to convert between the 2, I have had to get the old system flushed, and ester oil added to keep the parts from seizing, and even then, it may not get really cold.
I personally think it's toast, but of OP wants to save the unit, my best plan would be to have a refrigeration mechanic come by and give an estimate.

[Tom M King]

The systems I have it in are working great. I forget how long I had the pump pulling on the old systems, but probably for a couple of hours at least, and my pump is a two stage. When I do that, I add oil anyway. It only takes roughly half the amount of R12a, so it's possible that too much was put in yours. I always refer to the chart, but so far I don't have any reason not to do it. With those three vehicles, I replaced the compressor, dryer, and valves/orifice anyway. I'm not sure what more a "refrigeration mechanic" would have done differently. With all that replaced with new O-rings, and if it will hold vacuum over night, it should be good to go with the proper amount of refrigerant in it.

The tractor was originally R22, and I didn't want to pay for that, or even use any more of it since it's so bad for the atmosphere. That was my first experience with R12a, and it worked so good that I used it again in the cars that were using 134a, and the compressors played out on. I did all the work myself, so I know that every step was done correctly.

[Mike Henderson]

If it's copper tubing, they'll probably solder it. When doing that, you really need to have the coil open at some other point. Otherwise, the heat you put into it will heat the air in the coil and could push a pinhole in the solder.

But I'd probably write it off and get a new one. Sometimes a repaired unit starts to give problems and since you've invested money into it, you keep chasing the problems until you have more in the repaired unit than you would in a new one. And sometimes you have to give up and get a new one anyway.

Mike

[Tom M King]

Brazing is a lot stronger than soldering, and would be plenty strong enough for that. Silver soldering might work, but any other kind would require flux, and you couldn't use that in a refrigerant system, or at least, wouldn't want to. Not much different than joining other refrigerant lines. But if you aren't set up to do it yourself, yeah, might as well buy a new one. It might cost me as much as six dollars to fix it.

I bought all the equipment back when I needed to fix the AC in a tractor. The tractor was cheap, and the only thing it really needed was an AC compressor. The tractor weighs 17,000 lbs., and I didn't have a trailer, or truck then big enough to pull it anywhere for repair. It would have cost me more than the equipment cost me, just in pro hauling service to carry it the hour to the dealer, and the hour back, and that didn't include any repair.

I'll fix about anything if I can buy the tools to do it, and have my time doing it to save real money. If I hadn't gone through that, and ended up with the equipment, I'd just buy another freezer too.

[Kev Williams]

I may check with one of the wife's cousins, he does this stuff for a living, if he thinks he can fix it I'll probably let him. I'm okay with the soldering/brazing part, just not the recharging part...

Thanks all for the interesting discussion! :)

[Tom M King]

The recharging is easy, if you have the stuff to do it with. Without going into a long explanation about what goes where, there are plenty of youtube videos on that. You seal the system, by fixing the puncture. Draw a vacuum down on it with a pump, and gauge set (that has the lines that attach to the valves in the system), shut the pump off, an close it's valve, and see if it holds vacuum. If it holds vacuum, it's okay to put refrigerant in it. I like for it to hold a vacuum overnight.

Somewhere on the unit (if it's your car there is a label right under the hood) it tells you what type refrigerant, and how much by weight. Using a small, accurate scale, the refrigerant container is attached to the gauge, and line set by the proper hose. With the unit turned on, the correct valve opened, with the refrigerant on the now zeroed scale, and the valve closed when the correct amount of refrigerant has been sucked in (scale will read how much weight the refrigerant canister has lost). Any oil needed can be just put in the line before it's hooked up to the refrigerant canister.

It's one of those things that when you understand how it all works, it becomes simple.

[Lee Schierer]

Most likely the system is sealed and does not have a charging port. He will need to add a clamp on charging port.

[Tom M King]

Probably, if it's being taken to friend to replace puncture, just take it to an appliance repair place, and get them to charge it after it's fixed. If it won't hold a vacuum at the repair place, just get another one. I've never worked on an appliance refrigeration system-only three automotive ones, so I can't claim to be an expert. All those three are working great though.

[Ronald Blue]

IMO trash it, go buy another one and learn from the experience. Don't beat yourself up over it..............at least you didn't cut the Central Air line with a hedge trimmer.

That sounds like a real life experience......

[Kev Williams]

Okay, here's some pics-

405353
my holes are on the top rack, to the left, there's 2, barely visible-


405355
405356
the yellow stuff by the small hole isn't even visible to the naked eye-
but I think it's thawed food residue and nothing to do with refrigerant like I first thought, mostly because
there's traces of it- and other stuff- elsewhere..
But in the closeup, the small hole appears to have a 'black hole' in the middle, and I can't make out the larger hole much.
---the paint missing above the large hole is my doing with a razor knife...


405354
The compressor, and it's sealed, there's 2 crimped lines, middle left of the pic-


405357
The refrigerant specs-

And now, after looking at the compressor, I have no clue which tubing is used where the holes are- I based that assumption on looking in the back of the cabinet, where copper comes in and aluminum goes out, and it appears the copper heads straight up then works down- but now I'm not sure...

Still haven't had the wife call her cousin yet, need to do that...

[Tom M King]

Should be easy enough to fix the holes. The rest would be easy to, once it's figured out where to hook up a line set. I've not looked into this. Automotive systems have pretty obvious ports. R134a is available at any auto parts store.

There's probably a youtube video on how to hook up manifold gauge, and line set to one.

[Jerome Stanek]

Should be easy enough to fix the holes. The rest would be easy to, once it's figured out where to hook up a line set. I've not looked into this. Automotive systems have pretty obvious ports. R134a is available at any auto parts store.

There's probably a youtube video on how to hook up manifold gauge, and line set to one.

He would have to put the ports in as these are sealed units.

[Tom M King]

https://www.zoro.com/supco-piercing-valve-14-516-and-38-od-bpv31/i/G3776927/feature-product?gclid=Cj0KCQiA5Y3kBRDwARIsAEwloL7kLn-fBsiYcju6mDiyNZcoEt0kQrAhlNgU3Uh-uPOL2gjtX7aUnJcaAmOgEALw_wcB

You don't have to worry about what the high side, and low side pressures are. That's just for diagnosing problems other than holes in the system. It would just need a vacuum pulled on it, see if the vacuum holds, and then insert refrigerant. I'd find somewhere online that can answer whether, or not, to put a few drops of oil in before hooking up to the refrigerant cannister.

Without the pump, and line set, scale, and valve for refrigerant cannister, taking it to somewhere that works on them shouldn't cost too much to charge it, once the holes are repaired. The only way to know if they are repaired good enough would be to get the vacuum pulled, and see if it holds.