If your Norcold fridge won’t turn on at all there is a good chance your problem is a part called the high temperature monitoring switch. 

Luckily this part will tell you what’s wrong with it and is easy to reset. 

My name is Emily. I’m a certified RV Repair Tech and this is RV Repair Woman. 

Your high temperature monitoring switch’s (or HTMS) whole job is to make sure that this tube on the side isn’t getting too hot and to shut down your fridge if that happens. 

There are couple of ways this guy can fail and he’ll actually tell you what’s going on through this red LED on the front. 

There's four things that that LED could be doing, and you're going to take a different action depending on what action that LED is taking. 

So the first thing that LED could be up to is it could just be solid. If that is the case, it just means that at some point that tube got too hot and the HTMS detected it, so it shut the fridge down. 

Or also very likely you had some sort of water intrusion get into the HTMS. Think back and ask yourself if it has rained recently OR if you’ve had the RV cleaned recently. I’ve seen both trip this high temperature monitoring switch. 

It's just a safety mechanism that kicks in. If that is the case for you and you have a solid light, you're going to pull out a strong as hell magnet. It’s going to have to be stronger than your usual magnet that you find on your fridge. 

You're going to be looking for a magnet called a rare earth magnet or a neodymium magnet. And you're going to take that magnet and hold it on the top of the high temperature limit switch for like 15 seconds. You should hear a click and that light should turn off and your fridge should work again. Huzzah! 

This is not a hack. You're not breaking anything. This is literally in the service manual. This is like the way they want you to reset this. Why they did not just put a button on it, the world may never know. Norcold even tries to sell you a proprietary magnet. There's a Norcold magnet out there that's just a magnet on a stick just for this process. But any strong magnet would work. 

If after you reset this guy he trips again soon after, that’s where I’d recommend calling a certified tech. That’s when I start getting concerned that this tube is getting too hot consistently and we’re getting into some safety concerns. 

You Got This. 

The second thing that light might be doing is flashing quickly. So two to three times a second. 

If that light is flashing two to three times a second, then that is telling you that you have a bad thermal couple. 

Look for the brown wire coming out of this guy. If you were to follow him down, he goes to a part that looks like this. It just attaches with a hose clamp. He’s just the temperature probe the htms is using to monitor that tube. 

Switch it out and you should be good to go.

If instead that light is instead flashing slow, closer to once per second, that means that the HTMS is not getting enough voltage. So a voltage below nine and a half. 

We can double check this with our multimeters if we have one. Set your multimeter to DC volts. 

You should see a terminal labelled 12 V In. Put your red probe on that terminal and your black probe on any metal part of the case. You should see something in the realm of 12V. If you’re seeing below 9.5 then that backs up what the LED is telling you. 

This is where I’d start double checking if the circuit board itself is getting a good 12 V going into it. If it is but it isn’t sending a good 12 V out to the HTMS then that indicates your circuit board may be your problem. 

And the final thing that light might be doing is being completely off. If that is the case, then the HTMS is most likely doing just fine and your problem is with something else in your fridge. 

If this is the case I highly recommend heading over to rvrepairwoman.com/fridges where I have a course that costs less that what most techs will charge to come look at your fridge for you. And instead it will walk you through step by step how to test every part of your fridge like a pro. 

It basically walks you through what I would do if you called me with a problem with your fridge. 

Highly recommend you go check that out if you’re sick and tired of combing through youtube hoping to find an answer and just want to solve your problem today. 

And the final thing that LED could be doing is not be on at all, in which case that’s a good indication that the HTMS is not your problem and you should look into diagnosing some other part of your fridge.

You Got This.