Swift Challenger 530 Fridge Problem

[Ray4*]

Hi all, my 2022 model has a Dometic fridge fitted. During the hot summer it was struggling to keep anything in the freezer frozen and I took note of fitting extra computer cooling fan(s).
I haven't fitted any yet.
We are away at the moment in typical temperatures for September and the freezer is still struggling to freeze on the four light setting (five is the max.) but salad, peppers etc. in the salad drawer are starting to freeze, so we are having to dispose of food that shouldn't be frozen and food that should be frozen that is defrosting.
Would the extra fans solve this, or are we doing something wrong?
We haven't had any problems like this in any of our previous caravans except in high temperatures.
Any ideas welcome, thanks.

 

[Hutch]

I found that having too much food in the freezer, would cause the food to thaw out. It needed space around the food to keep everything frozen

 

[IanB1485]

Cold air falls , and I have read that on some fridges the freezer box can move forward and the cold air then descends into the fridge area. Not seen this myself but I suggest that you have a look to see if thats whats going on with yours.
The way a fridge works is that the ammonia liquid evaporates at very low temperature (about -18Deg C) , cooling the freezer section , then as the liquid /gas mixture warms up in the lower pipe and continues to evaporate (-5Deg C) this cools the fridge section. If the cooling pipe in the freezer section is not in good contact with the aluminium finned unit , then a lot of the liquid ammonia won't evaporate but trickles down into the fridge section , were its evaporation temperature will be lower, causing partial freezing of the fridge section. There are some screws holding the aluminium finned heat exchanger to the back wall , removing it may reveal the cooling pipe is not in good contact with the heat exchanger( there is a sort of brown sealant material which surrounds the coolant pipe ) and expanded foam behind the pipe which seems to allow it to move backwards over time , packing the cooling pipe forward ( by pushing the brown stuff behind the pipe and applying heat sink compound will improve the conduction and hence the efficiency of the freezer section

 

[birdman101]

We have the Dometic in our Swift and as we have no intention of removing the ice compartment I have sealed ours in permanently with silicon sealant and have had no problem with ours all through the Summer last year or this year. All previous fridges we have had over the years never had removable ice compartments and were always fine. That is why I fixed this one. With the compartment not firmly sealed and a gap is basically just having one large fridge.

 

[Mel]

Check that the freezer box in the fridge is pushed all the way back. They wiggle forward. I can understand why Birdman sealed his.
Mel

 

[Beachball]

The previous owner must have fixed our freezer box because so far it not moved and we had no problems .

 

[Ray4*]

Thanks for all the very prompt replies. I'll check this out.