So I went down stairs to get some canned elk out of the pantry last night and noticed it smelled "hot". The freezer was running and I felt the sides and thought, wow that feels warm. I then looked at the door and it was open about 1". All the meat and fish was still hard, but some zucchini bread at the top seemed thawed. Luckily I didn't loose anything. Later the wife told me she got some breakfast sausage out that morn and I put all blame on her. Anyway, the thing is running non stop. It is cold in there and things have refroze, but its working harder than I remember it running. I watched some vids. There are no coils or fan down there. Just a compressor. I watched how possibly manually defrosting it may be helpful or a fix. This is really my only option. Its probably gonna be a second before I get a warranty/repair response. Thoughts?

I do have a chest freezer that's smaller that would help facilitate a thaw and reboot

The coils etc will be under the unit or up the back outside the unit. Better keep a close eye on that for a week at least. Do you have a freezer alarm?

No alarm. Definitely keeping a close eye. There are no exposed coils underneath

do you have any place you can move that stuff too, it would be ideal to move it all , defrost it then after it has sat off for several hours plug it in fresh and let it cool down then start adding items that are already frozen

when you talk about a bunch of stuff getting warm even to bring a fridge of pop form 70 to 40 can take all night

if you have hundreds of pounds of meat to get from 30 back to 0 that can also take all night

coils under or on the back make sure they are clean they make a bush looks like a long bottle brush to clean them if on the bottom

most hardware stores sell these brushes

it may also help to run a fan blowing under the unit if the coils are on the bottom

wipe your seals with armor all or similar

my mother in law always argued upright because things are easier to find I always argue , chest because gravity keeps the door closed and the cold in

upright is just a shift in stuff or a door seal away from failure.

not a terrible idea to add a bungee cord that pulls the door closed all the time.

Freezers use energy. Energy creates heat... Takes heat to create cold

Thanks for the responses. Im going to try to move everything to my chest freezer tonight when it cools down and let the standup defrost and reboot tomorrow. Again this freezer has no exposed coils to get to. I was apprehensive about the standup but it is convenient to organize deer elk bear antelope birds and fish not to mention breast milk and other etc. I knew I would have to mess with it eventually. Warranty is up in November

Your evaporator coil on the inside at the bottom is most likely frozen up. You can take the panel off on the inside bottom usually 6 screws to remove the panel and take a heat gun and unthaw it. That’s if you don’t have no place to put the meat. Do it when it’s cool out if possible. If you got a place to move the meat to, then do what was mentioned above. Leaving the door cracked will pull in moisture which in turn freezes the coil. It builds up so bad that the defrost function can’t get all the ice off the coil in the allotted time.

Nothing to lose by defrosting. Defrosting does not take long for me. I have a 20 cubic foot chest freezer I manual defrost once per year. I take everything out. Unplug it, and use a pail of hot water and rub the sides and get the ice out and dry it. Food is back in in less then 20 minutes. If it keeps running warm or hot, try moving the cold knob a bit to see if it changes.

Bryce

Buy a new one,,,,, ?

Ican defrost a 17 cubic chest freezer 15 minutes. Neat little invention called a hair dryer. I’m talking one with 2 inch thick ice on 50% of the sides. Take out drain plug. Heat the aluminum sides and it melts ice and it falls off. Take it out as it releases

We had a door pop open years ago with our stand up freezer. We simply put a bungee cord from handle to back of freezer. It keeps the door shut, but mostly reminds us to make sure it's closed.

It will be fine just unplug it use hair dryer plug back in