Hello all!

I have a 5 year old Siemens side-by-side fridge with an ice cube dispenser. A couple of weeks ago the fridge and freezer part started warming up. I did all the diagnostics and manually defrosted the whole thing, it worked. Fridge and freezer part both get cold as they should (measured).

Now the problem is that the freezer is forming ice in the bottom of the housing. This ice also seems to melt from time to time (one every 2 days). I suspect that it is because of the automatic de-frost function.

I have been trying to figure this out and have come to the conclusion that when the freezer starts the de-frost cycle it doesn't pre-cool the freezer. I have come to this conclusion because when going through the service manual i have found that if the freezer (when in diagnostic-mode) gives you the error code "F1", this means that the F-sensor is not working. F-sensor of course being the freezer-sensor. When checking the service manual the pre-cool phase of the de-frost cycle starts by checking the f-sensor.

This makes me believe that because the f-sensor is not working properly the pre-cool doesn't start and the freezer get's just a little bit too warm and because of that forms condensation, leaking the water to the bottom, freezing and then during the next cycle unfreezing the ice again -> resulting the water leaking out of the fridge.

I'm not a appliance professional so I would like to know if i'm on the right path? Should I try something else?

Any suggestions are warmly welcome!

Greetings from Finland (it's cold here, but not cold enough for fridges to work properly it seems :)

The control board that this unit uses is: FRU54AD001

Service manual can be found Googling the control board number.

P.S. The thing that bothers me the most about the error code is that manual says it should say "F1", my error code says "-F1" I have no idea why there is a "-" mark in the front of my code.