Maytag not keeping temp on food side
Like other 4 year old Maytag side-by-side refrigerators (MSD2756GES), ours is suddenly not keeping the food side at normal (37-40) temperatures. Ours does have the Ice/Water dispenser but it is not attached to anything at this house. We are a bit stumped as to why the temperature problems and so here is an outline of our situation:
The freezer section is fine and is holding at zero degrees both top and bottom and it is set at 7 like usual (9 is Coldest and 5 would be the mid-range on the dial). The freezer side also has a fan running in it when the refrigerator is running also and you can feel air movement inside the freezer compartment. There is no visible ice anywhere.
We made sure the exterior lower back grill area was clear of any debris/dust and there is none we can see under the fridge. When the refrigerator is running, you can definitely feel air movement behind the lower backside grill and a little under the fridge, but no air movement toward the top backside.
After watching temperatures over the past week moving the temperature slides by one number until everything was at coldest it just wont get below 50 degrees on the top shelf. So inside the now empty food compartment, we did a temperature study over time (with the food section also set at 7 which is much colder than it normally sits at) and found (from the lowest bin up to the top shelf) that the temperatures stayed consistently as follows in degrees F
36 bottom bin
38 middle bin
32 meat drawer
36 bottom shelf
46 both middle shelves
50 top shelf
Having observed water puddle on the floor of the food side, under the bottom bin
we discovered ice formed around the vent area that goes into the meat bin. When the refrigerator is running (and you can hear the fan running on the freezer side), air is not perceptibly moving into the food side. There is an opening between the two sides (presumably) where a plastic box in the back sits with a thin piece of plastic like flap covering the opening at the middle bin height level and sticking ones fingers in there there is no air movement nor is it perceptibly any colder than the food compartment. We did find some ice forming around this box also.
Not sure if this means anything, but about two days after all this started a week ago - we had one day where the refrigerator ran almost continuously, so we turned off the power waited a few minutes and turned it back on again. This seemed to help reset the constant running and now it is turning on and off more like we are used to. Would sure love to know what is going wrong!