Common fault
What is the loud humming or rattling from my refrigerator?
Short answer
When a built-in starts making a sound it never made before, the source is behind the grille far more often than inside the cabinet.
The reasoning behind that
The condenser fan rattles when debris reaches the blade or when its bearing wears, and compressor mounts harden with age and hum into whatever they are touching. That second one carries further in these houses than in newer ones, because a unit set into a hand-built opening with tight clearances is in contact with wood on three sides, and plaster and hardwood do not absorb it the way modern finishes do. The noise is not an emergency on the day, but a fan left to seize takes the cooling with it.
How the diagnosis goes
Work out where it is coming from before you call. Open the door: if the noise gets louder, it is inside the cabinet and the evaporator fan is the first suspect, along with anything touching a blade. If the sound does not change with the door open, it is behind the grille, which means the condenser fan, the compressor or its mounts. Note whether it is a rattle, a hum or a buzz, and whether it comes and goes with the cooling cycle.
The rattle that comes and goes is usually the condenser fan meeting something that should not be there. On a canyon-side lot with mature landscaping the lower grille collects fine debris right through the dry months, and one piece of it reaching the blade sounds far worse than it is. The steady hum you feel through the cabinetry more than you hear is the compressor and its mounts, and on a unit that has been in a Mission Hills kitchen for decades that is age rather than failure.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Reviews
What Mission Hills customers say
The fresh food side crept up every afternoon while the freezer stayed rock solid. Came the same afternoon I called. He pulled the lower grille, showed me the coil packed with dust and a valance our carpenter dropped over half the opening. Cleaned it out, trimmed the valance back. Steady since.
Two other companies had been out about the frost on our freezer wall. This one checked the door before anything else. The heavy wood front had pulled it out of square, so the morning damp we get up here was getting straight in past the seal. Fixed and holding.
Cubes had been coming out small and hollow for ages and we just lived with it. The guy checked pressure at the valve first and traced the line to a little saddle valve down in the crawl space barely passing water. Changed the connection and the filter. Proper ice now.
Rated 4.9 from 617 customer reviews.
Appliance down in Mission Hills?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
My Sub-Zero sits in cabinetry a carpenter built around it. Do you have to pull it out?
Almost never. These units are serviced in place: the condenser is reached through the lower grille, and evaporators, fans and control boards come out from inside the cabinet. A Mission Hills built-in usually sits in an opening scribed to fit it, with trim that must come off before the appliance can move, so if a repair needs it pulled forward you hear that first.