If, like me, you are rather helpless when it comes to doing any interesting repairs around the house, the Internet's got your back.
There are many online resources to help you get going in very accessible ways.
During the winter break, my fridge was making a rather awful noise when running, and it would stop when I opened the door. The temperature was still cold and I was preparing for the Christmas celebration, so I ignored it for a few days, but it got both worrying and annoying pretty quick.
I started by going to the manufacturer's website. I found some manuals talking a bit about the operation of the fridge, but I didn't find anything particularly useful. I did find the page for Refrigerator Noises from LG, which has short sound clips for normal and abnormal sounds, which I found very interesting.
I cleaned the coils in the back, but I was still hearing noise, and with the help of some searches on YouTube, finally identified the issue as a fan in the back of the fridge hitting ice building around the heating coils.
I eventually found a video describing repairs that matched my model closely, figured out it was safe to clean on my, ended up going down this path. There's a series of video starting with PART 1 How to Fix a SAMSUNG RF 267 Refrigerator Not Cooling Icing and Freezing DIY repair that walks you through it.
One note for visitors - even if your model is different, the tightness isn't in the construction or assembly, but simply by the mass of frozen ice holding the thing in place. If it's really hard to take the back cover out, keep defrosting. You can let it thaw some on its own, but it takes a long time while the cover is still there - even after a day, it still had quite a bit of ice buildup. The styrofoam reall does work well for insulating it, for better and worse.
You really do need to empty out your fridge and freezer while you go through this, and take care that the food doesn't spoil, or if it does, discard it. I'm going to quote the FDA's recommendation here: If you plan to eat refrigerated or frozen meat, poultry, fish, or eggs while they are still at safe temperatures, it is important that each item is thoroughly cooked to a safe minimum internal temperature to ensure that any foodborne bacteria that may be present are destroyed. However, if at any point the food was above 40 F for 2 hours or more (or 1 hour if temperatures are above 90F) - discard it.
If you try new things and succeed, it's common to want to do more. Being proficient at something often brings a sense of satisfaction. Go to Ask This Old House to see a bunch of videos to inspire you to make this better around the house.
YouTube is a phenominally large presence on the web of course. With 2bn monthly logged-in users and 500 hours of video uploaded per minute in 2019, there's no stopping the amount of content that comes and goes through that platform.
Of course, that means you still need to sift through all that content, and the increased focus on commercialization comes at the expense of usefulness every now and again. Ads that interrupt your video while you're holding some piece of equipment as you follow along can be more than just annoying.
And despite the continued focus on music, children's content and political discourse, repair and fix-it videos are doing just fine.
The web is a wide place and there are alternative to PDFs and videos of course, just like there are alternatives to fixing everything yourself. My latest recommendation from a friend (not a search engine!) was to go try and find someone on Thumbtack to help with some plumbing that I'm not quite comfortable doing myself. Know your limits and use home repairs to get some satisfaction while impoving your day-to-day environment, and let experts do their work.
Happy repairs and upgrades!
Tags: housekeeping tutorial