What this usually is on DL cabinets
Noise on the DL family sorts into three places: the compressor and its mounts, the two fans and what they can hit, and the cabinet itself acting as a sounding board. Each has a distinctive signature and none of the first checks needs a tool. What follows is the order that separates them fastest.
How the fault presents
- A gurgle or a boiling sound after the machine stops — Refrigerant equalising through the tubing. It is normal and is on this list so it can be ruled out rather than chased.
- A brief hiss shortly after the machine shuts down — Pressure equalising. Like the gurgle it is normal, and it is worth naming so that it does not get repaired.
- Opening the door makes the noise stop — The door switch cuts the evaporator fan, so anything that stops with the door belongs to it.
- NEAR MISS — the noise arrived and the cabinet stopped getting cold — A fan that has stopped is both quieter and warmer; that combination belongs with the cooling article rather than this one.
What it usually turns out to be, in order
- Cabinet touching a wall, a counter or another appliance — Anything the cabinet touches becomes part of the instrument. A unit set into a recess or pushed against a dishwasher transmits its normal running noise into a much larger surface, and the complaint is a machine that suddenly got loud without anything failing. Ranked first on DL: it is not a fault of the machine at all but of how it has been put in, and that varies far more across these two codes than the hardware does.
- Evaporator fan blade catching ice inside the freezer section — A blade clipping frost gives a hard, intermittent tick that changes with the door: hold the door switch in and the sound appears, let it out and it stops. It ranks second on DL rather than first only because the cause above it is quicker to exclude, not because it is rarer.
- Relay, control or defrost timer clicking on schedule — A click every few minutes, or a clunk on a long period, is a switching noise. Third on this family, and the rank where the cause stops being obvious from the doorway.
What to check first, second, third
- Two minutes before any tool — Lean on the cabinet, then pull it clear of what it touches. Between them those two moves settle the majority of noise complaints on compact refrigeration.
- Pull the cabinet clear of everything it touches — Even a finger's width of air changes the sound if contact is the cause.
- Hold the door switch in and listen at the freezer section — A tick that follows the switch is the evaporator fan, and it means frost as well as noise.
- Time the clicks against what the compressor does — A click that starts the compressor is normal. A click that does not, repeating every few seconds, is a start fault.
Before you touch anything
Safety
Unplug the appliance or switch off its breaker before removing any panel. A capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off.
Models in the DL family
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| DL1-11.2 | avanti:refrigerator:dl |
| DL1.15.3 | avanti:refrigerator:dl |
When this stops being owner work
Book a technician once the checks above come back clean, and book one straight away if any of three things is true: the compressor is hot and silent, the breaker will not hold, or there is oil at a joint. Those three each mean the fault has moved past the part of the machine an owner can reach.
Nearest pages for this model group
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