Lamona (Howden) Freezer Flap

We all get used to our freezers and go about our lives without thinking much of the days when a freezer was a luxury not a necessity. We only realise how important it is when it fails.

I had a look into most common problems occurring with our freezers and without any surprise to me it is freezer baskets, flaps and covers that are being treated poorly and fail quite often. Unfortunately at the top of the list are freezer flaps and freezer covers. These get damaged quite often and it is not uncommon for an engineer to see duct tape holding broken pieces and cracked flaps together inside your fridge or freezer.

Why do the freezer flaps and covers break?

It’s our fault. We try to squeeze too many items inside the drawers and our children seem to love to swing off them. At first it looks like we succeeded fitting all our food inside, however what we don’t realise is that food expands as soon as it starts to freeze. Ice crystals are slightly larger than the water which they were built from, therefore the frozen food will take much more room (especially those foods rich of water such as meat, fish and vegetables). Unfortunately these natural forces are gigantic. Freezing water can easily damage such strong materials like asphalt, pipes or concrete, therefore a plastic freezer flap will stand no chance with this force of nature and simply break.

Smashing a freezer door onto freezer flap or cover is second most common reason for flaps to break. We live our lives in hurry and often forget to close the freezer flap or leave freezer basket pulled out slightly. When the door smashes the flap or cover it simply breaks.

Freezer flap or cover?

A typical freezer will have both: flap and covers

• Top (fast freeze) flap. In most cases this is a fixed compartment with drop down or lift up flap.
• Freezer draw cover. The cover that is fixed to the front of the freezer drawer. This usually can be found on lower freezer baskets.

All freezer flaps and covers come in variety of sizes with different fitting pins so it is very important to look for one specific for your freezer model. It is not uncommon that two different freezer flaps will look alike however the dimensions and fittings will be different. Please bear in mind that flaps and covers although look very similar have different fittings. Your freezer most likely will have one flap (on the top) and one or many draw covers.

Lamona (Howden) Freezer Flaps

If you have Lamona fridge freezer you will need to check your model number in order to find correct flap or cover. Typical Lamona model number begins with HJA followed by 4 digit code. Please make sure you take model number from the appliance itself not the corresponding manual as these are often printed for several models. Few examples below:

• Lamona HJA6014 freezer flap (top)
• Lamona HJA6014 freezer draw cover (bottom drawers)

Fridge Door Hinge

So what is a fridge door hinge?

A door hinge is a type of bearing that connects two objects together typically allowing only a limited angle of rotation. In the case of a fridge or freezer door hinge it is usually a metal hinge that allows the door to swing from right to left and vice versa.

A typical fridge hinge is generally made of durable metal as it will have to carry the full weight of the door not to mention all the goods that we frequently stack in the fridge door such as milk, juice and jam jars etc. Some fridges will also have an inbuilt water tank and dispenser in the door. The total weight of the door can reach up to 20kg!  That’s quite a lot providing that is only usually held there by two (upper and lower) hinges.

Left or Right Hinge? Upper or Lower Hinge?

A typical fridge or fridge freezer will have two hinges: Upper and Lower. Most doors can swing in either direction, therefore the upper hinge will become lower hinge and vice versa if you change the swing direction. Similarly a hinge can be right or left depending on the door swing. The diagram below explains the hinge naming convention.

Type A

Upper left hinge fits in either the upper position, if your door is hinged on the left, or the lower position, if your door is hinged on the right.

Type B

Upper right hinge fits in either the upper position, if your door is hinged on the right, or the lower position, if your door is hinged on the left.

Fridge Door Hinge Fitting

Beko Freezer Flap

Freezers – we all love them. A brilliant appliance that lets us enjoy our food (and other items) longer. These days a freezer is a necessity in every household. We just can’t live without them. However, do we really look after our Fridge Freezer? I am sure that I am not the only one who has never bothered to replace a freezer flap when broken.

Yes my friends, freezer flaps are one of the most common parts that get damaged in this type of appliance. Why? Maybe because we love frozen food so much, that we often overload our freezer.

When food freezes it expands and sometimes can put enormous pressure on the freezer flap. The second most common reason for the flap to get damaged is  insecurely packaged food. If the food is not packed properly the water that it contains slowly starts to evaporate, and turn in to ice crystals as soon as it touches nearest cold surface – freezer flap. That’s why flaps get often stuck or jammed. Then when you pull the flap it simply breaks.

I had a look at the data and found that the most common to break is Beko Freezer Flap. Here are some typical Beko freezer models: CDA660FS, CDA660FW, CDA664FW, CDA670FS, CDA670FW, CDA671FW.

Lamona Fridge Bottle Shelf

We go about our lives everyday not realising how many important facilities work for us every day. Let’s take a fridge for example. Have any you ever wondered how different life must have been before the fridge was invented? We take all these small things for granted like they were owed to us.

Sometimes however even these lovely appliances say ‘No’ and refuse to work. Recently it came to my attention that fridge bottle shelves get damaged quite often. More importantly I have found out that Lamona Fridge bottle shelf seems to be one of the most popular item in spare parts store.

Wonder why? Is it a design flaw? Or is it the way users treat the appliance? Perhaps fridge bottle shelves are damaged by cleaning? Or are they simply mistreated by children that try to reach the top of the fridge by supporting themselves on fridge bottle shelf?

This problem definitely requires further investigation. I have set up the watchdog to monitor sales of the Lamona and other fridge bottle shelves. The enquiry should get us a bit closer to the real reason why bottle shelves get damaged.

At the moment I have managed to pin point 4 popular models that seem to be affected:

Lamona HJA6131, HJA6132, HJA6302, HJA6312

Have one of those? Be prepared. Replacement part may cost you around £15.

Maintenance of your Fridge Freezer

It is important to properly maintain you Fridge and Freeze if you wish to use it for years to come. Modern Fridge and Freezers are built of hundreds of spare parts that sometimes need to be replaced in order to keep your appliance up and running.

Some of those spares are consumables that you will have to replace more than once during the lifetime of your fridge freezer, such as: fridge light bulb or fridge water filter. Others such as fridge thermostat or fridge bottle shelf may only be necessary if original part gets broken.

So what to do when we need spare part for fridge freezer? Calling an engineer is one of the options. Unfortunately the call out fees are pretty high and it may cost you anything between £50-£100 per hour. As much as it seems good idea to get professional to fix your fridge thermostat or to tell you what part do you need, then it seems crazy and extremely expensive when you need to change fridge lamp or fridge water filter. Perhaps you could change it yourselves?

What to do?

If you need spare part fast then you should probably visit your local part store. Unfortunately there are hundreds of spare parts in every appliance. Then there are tens of brands and some of those manufacture hundreds of models. That gives you literally millions of spare parts just for the fridge. As we know you need to sell more than just fridges these days to make money therefor part store probably will also supply spares for other electrical appliances such as ovens, hobs, cookers, washers, dryers etc.

You will need place size of Wembley stadium to keep all those parts. Unless your local part store is one of those you will need to turn to alternative. Thankfully online parts store is a solution. They list millions of parts on their website catalog and can get the part you need send to you direct from manufacturer.