Top 10 Fisher and Paykel Active Smart E522B Bottom Freezer Refrigerator Questions & Answers

My fridge (E440T but I believe the E522B is similar) also had a broken fan wire. I pulled off the panel and re-soldered the wire. I also created a document for others to follow if interested at http://www.accentis.com.au/downloads/misc/How I fixed my Fisher and Paykel Fridge Active Smart Fridge.pdf
Thanks to all postings on this site - it really helped a lot.

i have a fisher and paykel 450L fridge and its been pissing water out underneath the vege crisper since day one, i was told by f&p whilst it was under warranty that it was because of the humidity and constant opening and closing, i finely had enough of cleaning up fridge pee! you shouldnt have to do this for a 2 year old fridge, god sakes the 20 year old beer fridge doesnt leak. rang f&p and booked a service call $121 fast bucks, had to be available from 12miday untill 5pm bloke showed up at 4.45. inside the fridge he took the back panel off and then got out a part from his bag a long black thing with wires and attached it to the?whatever, but get this! it wasnt a replacement part, this fridge never had this part, so what? did they forget to put it in? and ive have to put up with fridge pee for 2 years?? and why do i have to pay the $121? he told me i wouldnt have to pay for the part? whippee? i already paid for it when i bought the "faulty" fridge. ill be getting to the bottom of this, does f&p know there is a fault? and they dont bother to fess up? lucky they dont make cars!!!! took about 10min and so far no more fridge pee!!

I think I may have the solution, after having suffered through the same problem for months. I have a Kenmore Elite side-by-side which is really the same as KitchenAid and Whirlpool. Having thought of complicated solutions first, I have finally gotten back to step 1, simple solution. Tape the switch on the top of the freezer compartment and see if that works for you. I believe the door while seemingly closed is not pushing the switch in far enough. If that works for you, you can probably glue something to the top of freezer door so it can push in the door switch a little better. The reason that it beeps is that the switch is not pushed in enough and the light is still on inside while the door is closed. The refrigerator then thinks the door is still open. I really hope this works for you as I can sympathize with you having listened to the beeps for months. I feel sorry for people who have changed one circuit board after another to no avail. And there are so many stupid repairmen out there offering dumb advices and perform needless repairs.

Hope I'm not too late - I had EXACTLY the same problem and the freezer fan wire was broken. I fixed it an documented everything in http://www.accentis.com.au/downloads/misc/How I fixed my Fisher and Paykel Fridge Active Smart Fridge.pdf. Good luck.

I have a Fisher and Paykel E442B upside down, which is a very similar model, and I just fixed the same problem (temperature was around -4C even though I set the fridge temperature as warm as possible).

The cause of my problem was excessive ice build up on the side of the evaporator coil (which is in the back of the freezer compartment behind the rear plastic panel). I had the same problem around a year or so ago, so I expect it to be a regular occurence. To defrost the coil, I removed all the drawers in the freezer, and the plastic insert by pulling out the bottom of the panel out and rotating it upwards until it released at the top. There are a couple of snap-in tabs holding the panel in, so with a bit of pulling they released. The tabs are either side of the slot at the bottom of the panel.


I then supported the panel horizontally on the top shelf so that I didn't have to disconnect the thermostat wire and the circulating fan wire.
With a small fan heater set on low, aimed roughly at the ice buildup on the left hand side of the evaporator coil, I defrosted the ice built up. This took around 2 hours or so. Then put it all back together and it worked fine.

I'm not sure why the ice build up on the side caused the problem, but presumably it interferes with the proper flow of cold air to the fridge compartment.

If you don't seem to have ice build up like I did, then it could be a thermostat problem, or a fan problem (a symptom of which would be fridge being colder at the bottom than at the top).

While staying with a friend that had this problem we assaulted the fridge. Pulling everything we could apart. After finding this link http://www.stokes-aus.com.au/StokesAP/Manufacturer_Info/FP/FRIDGES/517579%20%20Series%20R%20N308R,308XR,325TR,369BR,375TR,395BR,400HR,4.pdf which had a parts list similar to the fridge we had. Pulled out the Defrost timer paragon located next to the compressor. After giving it a good shake it started making ticking sounds again. It appears that it is semi-faulty in our case and had stopped working.

if not humming at all then i would say a new thermostat should fix the problem

It is probably the buildup of ice around the condensor (located behind white panel in freezer). I chekcked mine and the ice had pushed the panel oajar and the condensor unit was out of place too. All due to the excess buildup of ice. I removed the ice tonight.. will tell you if this fixes noise problem. Also our fridge was not cooling ..freezer ok.. hope this fixes this problem too- otherwise i'll test the fan (located behind panel in freezer compartment.

I have water running through fridge but i can not get the fridge to make ice. my ice is not turn off, but i do not understand what i'm doing wrong.

Sometimes this can happen with fridges that have two evaporator circuits. One circuit controls the freezer and the other controls the chillier part. I can't be sure how your fridge has been configured but the first thing to do is defrost it.
Has the fridge been moved recently or tipped on its side? The compressor has a small amount of oil in it to help it run smoothly and prolong its life. If any of this oil finds its way into the gas circuit it can restrict the calibrated evaporator jet. Defrost the fridge and let it stand for 12 hrs. before restarting it.
This problem can also point to an old and worn out fridge or a fridge that requires re-gassing. Either way its best to buy a new fridge in this case, you can generally tell as the fridge motor will run almost continually and get very, very hot indeed and can become a fire risk.
Lastly, some people put fridges out in a cold garage or store. This can also prevent some fridges from working properly when the garage temperature drops below the temperature that the fridge operates at, it this case the freezer part might also stop working if the temperature of the garage dropped below freezing.
So, Defrost your fridge and let it stand for a while at normal room temperature. Restart the fridge and it should work normally. make sure the temperature dial is set to a reasonable setting, it should work, if not it might be time for a new one.