The short answer
On the Alpicool IC refrigerator a complaint that reads as "it runs but nothing is cold" is far more often heat that cannot leave the condenser than a failed compressor. The two codes in this family share the IC prefix and differ only in what follows it, running from IC36 to IC36W.
What you observe
- It never stops running — A healthy cabinet cycles. One that runs from morning to night is one that is never reaching the number it was set to.
- It is plainly running, and nothing inside is cold — The compressor note is there and the panel is lit; the contents disagree with both.
- Frost has banked up on the cold plate — A sheet rather than a light dusting, often heavier at one end than the other.
- NEAR MISS — it is cold but there is water underneath it — A cabinet that holds temperature and leaks is the water-leak page, not this one.
Causes, most likely first on this family
- Heat that cannot leave the condenser — First. The condenser is the cabinet's only way of getting rid of what it has taken out of the food, and it needs moving air to do it. Tucked into a recess or wedged against a wall, it ends up re-breathing its own exhaust: the heat goes round in a circle, the run never ends and the setpoint is never met. The same check covers everything from IC36 to IC36W; the record gives no reason to treat those codes differently here.
- The supply the cabinet is running from — Second. A compressor draws several times its running current for the moment it starts. A thin extension lead, a tired socket or a long run sags at exactly that moment, the control sees the dip and shuts down to protect itself, and tries again a minute later. The panel stays lit throughout, which is why this gets mistaken for a dead cooling system.
- A loss in the sealed system — Last, always. It is the rarest of these causes and the only one that cannot be touched without recovery equipment and a licence. What it looks like is a machine trying hard and achieving nothing: long runs, a condenser that stays lukewarm, and a cabinet that drifts back up as fast as it comes down.
- Body: Two codes, one IC prefix, IC36 at one end and IC36W at the other. The record does not say what the numbers track, but a family carried across this many codes is sold in more than one variant, and more variants means more different places these end up standing in — recesses and cupboards among them. That is what moves airflow above the supply path here.
First, second, third
- Give it a hand's width on every side and run it for an hour — Watch whether the compressor starts cycling rather than running flat out. Recovery in open air is an installation verdict, not a repair. Identical on every code from IC36 to IC36W.
- Plug it into a different socket, directly — No adaptor, no extension, nothing else on the same outlet. A machine that cools properly on the new socket has told you the fault was never inside it.
- Body: Work these in order rather than picking the one that sounds most likely. Each check below removes a whole branch of the list above, and none of them needs a panel off or a tool in hand.
Before you open anything
Safety
Unplug the cabinet or switch off its breaker before removing any panel — a capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. Everything in the order above is done with the cabinet standing as it is, and none of it needs a panel off. Keep hands and tools away from the compressor and the tubing around it: those lines are under pressure, and a scratch that opens one turns an ordinary repair into a sealed-system job.
Models this page covers — The two model codes recorded for this family; the record carries no column separating them.
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| IC36 | alpicool:refrigerator:ic |
| IC36W | alpicool:refrigerator:ic |
The line between a fix and a service call
Stop and call if the compressor runs and the coil never warms up, if the cabinet trips the circuit it is on, or if the tubing is oily or damaged. Those three are sealed-system findings, and the tools for them are recovery tools rather than hand tools. Short of that, a cabinet that fails one of the checks above is usually fixed by correcting what failed it, at no cost but the time.
The rest of this family
Lead Appliance Repair Technician · 12 years experience
Experienced technician with 12 years specializing in washing machine and dryer repairs across all major brands.
