Say you walk into the cooler and it’s 48 degrees and quiet. Or the freezer reads 20, the fans are spinning, and nothing feels cold. You’ve still got a kitchen to run.
Power, thermostat and door
Spend two minutes on the obvious first. Look at the breaker panel and at any disconnect switch near the condenser. A tripped breaker can be reset once. If it trips again, leave it off and call, because a breaker that keeps tripping is protecting something and forcing it can turn a small problem into a big one. Make sure nobody bumped the thermostat, too, and that the door was actually closed. A door left cracked overnight can warm a box without anything being broken.
Write down the time and temperature
Take a photo of the thermometer with your phone so the time gets recorded with it, and if you can, take another every half hour. Those readings help with the food safety decisions, and with an insurance claim if it comes to that.
Call, and tell us what you’re seeing
You don’t need to know what broke. Tell us what kind of unit it is and what the thermometer says, then whatever you can see or hear: whether the condenser outside is running, whether the fans inside are turning, whether there’s ice on the coil. That helps the tech bring the right parts. We’ll give you an arrival window on that call.
Protect the product
Keep the door shut as much as you can. A closed walk-in full of cold product holds temperature for a while, and every trip in to grab something loses ground. Move the most expensive and most sensitive items into whatever else is working, like reach-ins, prep table bases or a friendly neighbor’s cooler. Raw proteins and dairy go first, packed loosely enough that air can still move. Bagged ice can help for a short stretch.
Whether food that got warm can be kept is a food safety call. Follow your food safety plan or ask your health department. If you might file an insurance claim, photograph the product before it goes out. Our guide on product loss and insurance lists the records to keep.
What not to do
If the coil is covered in ice, leave it alone. Chipping at it with anything sharp can puncture the tubing and turn a defrost repair into a refrigerant leak. And again, don’t keep resetting a breaker that trips.
Once the tech has found the problem, they’ll tell you what failed and give you a written price before starting the repair. There’s more on how that works on our emergency refrigeration and walk-in cooler repair pages.
