help! fermenting fridge not turning on with johnson controller

i have beer fermenting in a fridge hooked up to a johnson controller. i just checked it, and all was fine. went to the store to get some water to brew another batch and was gone for 10 minutes, now the ref is not running. the light in the ref is on, but the compressor is not. i unplugged the johnson controller and still the light is on but nothing else works. did the johnson controller kill the refrigerator?

after about 15 minutes it kicked backed on without the JC plugged it.

i hope its not going to cut out again.

I had a similiar problem just 2 days ago. It turned out to be a bad fridge thermostat. So, what I did was unplug the fridge then disconnected the fridge thermostat. I cut the two wires leading to the thermostat and connected those two wires with a wire nut. Plug it back in and if it runs then you know the thermostat is bad. In my case I knew that it was bad before I cut the wires. I then plugged in the JC thermostat and it has been perfect ever since. Basically all you are doing is by-passing the fridge's thermostat.

BeantownR6 said:

i have beer fermenting in a fridge hooked up to a johnson controller. i just checked it, and all was fine. went to the store to get some water to brew another batch and was gone for 10 minutes, now the ref is not running. the light in the ref is on, but the compressor is not. i unplugged the johnson controller and still the light is on but nothing else works. did the johnson controller kill the refrigerator?

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Of course you turned the fridge thermostat down to its lowest possible setting before plugging into the Johnson?

the fridge is set to its coldest temp. checked it this morning, its seems to be ok. if it happenes again ill bypass the fridge thermostat.

It may have hit the defrost cycle, that will cause the compressor to stop running for a short time.