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The evap coils in my freezer have been building up ice, so I opened up the freezer to diagnose the issue, and was confused by what I saw:

enter image description here

My fridge is the following model (freezer assembly is shown at the attached link): HTS22GBPBRCC

I've discovered that the white probe at the bottom of the copper pipe is a temperature sensor, but I have no idea what the blue object is. My guess is that it's the defrost thermostat since it's clipped to the copper pipe, but it doesn't look like any defrost thermostat I've been able to find, and it's definitely not the thermostat that's supposed to be in my freezer. Moreover, there shouldn't be a temperature sensor in my freezer either, at least according to the freezer assembly.

According to the freezer assembly, my freezer should have two separate defrost thermostats:

  1. Thermostat 1
  2. Thermostat 2

My questions are as follows:

1.) Has anyone seen this blue part before? What is it? If it's a defrost thermostat, it doesn't appear to be wired like the correct defrost thermostat for my freezer.

2.) The freezer assembly states that I should have two defrost thermostats - is that unusual?

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  • Did you buy this freezer new or used? If used, it's possible that someone before you did a handyman hack to make it work so it no longer matches the mfgr specs.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 11:24
  • Good point, the fridge came with the house.
    – A.Comer
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 13:37
  • Unfortunately, I have no idea what that is or what it's for, but I'd imagine someone will know.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 13:53
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    the blue object may be nothing more than a clamp
    – jsotola
    Commented Jul 21, 2020 at 19:09

1 Answer 1

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jsotola was correct - after taking the entire freezer assembly apart, I found that the blue object was indeed just a bizarre clamp. The wires connected to it attached to the fan. I have no idea why it was clamped to the copper pipe.

After leaving a hairdryer running for ~30 minutes in the freezer, I actually found the two defrost thermostats mentioned in the specifications. They were located behind the evap coils and had been completely encased in ice. This isn't really relevant, but I think that is probably the most inconvenient place to mount the defrost thermostats.

Only divination can answer why an additional temperature sensor was added.

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1
  • Nice sleuthing! Maybe the clamp was added to keep the wires from getting frozen to the coils. Or, perhaps, because vibration was causing the insulation to be worn off when they contact the coils. In either case, be sure to give your answer a check mark so people know it's been resolved.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Jul 22, 2020 at 12:29

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