It's a wine lovers worst nightmare. You've returned home from work, a holiday or even woken up to your wine fridge beeping and your heart sinks! How long has it been beeping? What is wrong with my wine fridge? Is my beloved bottle of 1985 Leroy ok?
In all likelihood, unless you have been on holiday or away for some time, a beeping wine fridge is probably an easily solvable situation and no damage to your wine has occurred. Today we're going to look at the top reasons your wine fridge is beeping and suggest solutions to fix it.
One quick note before we get into the reasons your wine fridge is beeping is that many brands of wine fridge do beep for short burst of time. When you're setting the temperatures many wine coolers beep to let you know they are working. The only time you should worry about a beeping wine fridge is when the beeping is continuous.
1) The wine cooler is over-heating
Wine fridges overheat for many reasons, the prime suspects are over-working because the external environment is too hot or too cold or an inability to vent because the vents are blocked, clogged or a freestanding wine cooler is positioned too close to other furniture/cabinets and can't vent.
In the first example you need to move the wine fridge to a more temperate environment (indoors) and in the latter case you need to allow the wine cooler to vent hot air by removing the clog, unblocking the vents or moving the wine fridge away from other furniture.
2) The unit is tilting or unbalanced
Wine fridges must be perfectly level, not only side to side but also back to front, if a wine fridge is angled in any direction the cooling agent inside the device can't move around the unit in a regular motion.
The solution to this is to ensure the wine fridge is perfectly level and not tilting in any direction.
3) The door is open
An oldie but a goodie, has someone left the door open or are the seals on the door worn meaning the unit is just not closing properly? Is something stuck in the door creating a gap or has the wine fridge door being knocked somehow. If the door is not sealed properly the wine fridge wont be able to maintain its internal temperature and will beep continuously.
4) Teenagers
Teenage parties are one of the top reasons wine coolers stop working! A partying teen may well try to open a locked wine cabinet with a pin, credit card or even brute force! Anything that causes damage to your door or door seal will make the wine fridge struggle to hold temperature.
There's little you can do to prevent a tempted teenager other than going back in time and making different life choices.
5) The door seals are worn
If the door seals are worn the wine cooler will suffer from cool air escaping, the unit having to work harder to keep the unit cool, it overheating, and the alarm going off. You need to fix the door seals.
6) The unit has been under or over stocked
It may seem obvious that over-stocking a wine cooler over its stated maximum capacity could cause it to fail to maintain temperature but it's also true that running the wine fridge under capacity can do the same. The wine fridge will have to work harder to cool thin air if you don't fill it up. Even if you don't usually keep your basic Rioja or Sauvignon Blanc in the wine cooler, do so if you're running low on regular bottles.
7) The ventilation system is clogged
This is another example of a unit overheating. A common fix for a beeping wine cooler is simply to take everything out, clean it from top to bottom, reset it and see if the beeping continues. This is the IT equivalent of turning it off and turning if on again, and like that IT solution, it works a good % of the time!
8) It has been reset
Perhaps there has been an electrical outage. If that's the case your wine cooler may be beeping because you need to set the temperatures again.
9) You've put things on top of your wine cooler
From bitter experience your author writes reason number nine. You have a lot of wine, including wine in wooden boxes. The logical place to put this when your wine cabinet is full is on top of your wine cooler, right? Wrong.
If you have a freestanding wine cooler it vents from the front, sides, back AND from the top. Most freestanding wine coolers need 30cm of space above them in order for the hot air to escape. In order to stop your wine fridge from beeping, take off anything you've stored on top of it.
10) The door alarm is faulty
If none of the above reasons are the culprit it could simply be that the door alarm itself is faulty and going off on its own accord without reason. In this case you will need to contact the manufacturer.
If you have an issue with your wine fridge and don't believe any of the above reasons will solve your problem, speak to one of our experts via live chat who will be happy to help.