The short answer for these models
The useful first question is not what has broken but where the cold is going. On a running unit it is being made and then lost, and the three places it is lost are the evaporator, the door and the condenser. Work through those before anyone mentions the compressor. The KD models take the same faults in a different order: a single-door cabinet shares one cold source between the chill box and the food space, so a fault in one shows up in the other and the symptom you notice is rarely where the fault is, and the compartment-by-compartment checks therefore come before anything else.
What you observe
- The KD form you own, which changes what the rest of this list means — Count the doors. Two compartments behind two doors behave independently; one door means a symptom can appear far from its cause.
- Frost has built into a sheet rather than a dusting — Frost you can carve rather than brush is thick enough to be the cause and not the consequence.
- Food near the cold source freezes while the rest stays warm — The split between frozen and warm tells you the cold is arriving in one place and going no further.
Causes, most likely first on this family
- A condenser that cannot shed its heat — It ranks here because it is common, entirely visible, and fixed with a vacuum cleaner and a few inches of clearance. This is where the order departs from the brand-level page: on the KD models the construction settles it, so the compartment-by-compartment checks come before the checks that lead anywhere else.
- The sealed system or the compressor — It comes last because every cheap cause above has to be excluded before anyone opens a refrigerant circuit, which is licensed work.
Check in this order, and why
- First — shut the door on a strip of paper and pull — Take a strip of paper round the whole frame rather than one corner of it. Seals fail locally, and one soft inch is enough to warm a cabinet. On these models this is the step the construction changes: the answer only tells you something once you know which form the unit is.
- Second — feel the condenser and the air around it — The coil should be warm and the air around it should be moving. Neither of those is true when it is blanketed.
Before you open 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. Nothing sharp and nothing hot goes near an evaporator: the tubing behind the ice is thin aluminium and a puncture ends the appliance rather than delaying it. The refrigerant circuit is sealed, pressurised and worked on under licence, so leave it entirely alone.
Where the owner job ends
Book the visit when the door seals, the vents, the condenser and the setting have all been checked and the cabinet still will not hold. Book it the same day if food is at risk, and say how long the unit runs between stops — a cabinet that never stops is a different fault from one that cycles normally and still runs warm.
The other symptoms covered for 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.
