If your fridge is working on propane, but not on electric, then there’s a chance that your heating element has gone bad.

To find out if this is the case just set your multimeter to resistance and head to the back of your fridge!

(Forgot about the resistance setting on your meter? No problem - you can get a refresher here.)

If you look to the side of your fridge, there should be a sheet metal tube.

Inside of that tube is going to be your electric heating element. Your electric heating element is actually how your fridge gets cold when it’s on the electric setting.

The process of how that works is a topic for another day, but for now just know that in order for your fridge to get really cold we need that sheet metal tube to get really hot. When your fridge is on propane we get that tube hot using a flame and on electric we use this heating element.

Inside that heating element is essentially just a big resistor.

A resistor is just a material that is very hard for electricity to move through.

When electricity has to start working really hard it creates a lot of heat.

So we can measure the resistance of this heating element to see if it’s still good or not.

You don’t have to take the heating element out of the tube - that’s actually kind of difficult to do sometimes. Just follow the wires back to the circuit board and carefully unplug them.

You may have 1 heating element or two depending on the make and model of fridge you have. If you have two heating elements make sure to test both of them.

With your meter set to resistance, put one probe in one terminal for the heating element, and the other probe for the other terminal on the heating element You should get some kind of resistance reading.

You can Google your brand of fridge and “heating element resistance” and it should help you bring up what that resistance reading should be at.

But for the most part when these heating elements fail, they actually break inside, so if you’re getting a resistance reading that says something like 0L or infinity that means that the wire inside of the heating element has broken.

The resistance is infinite because the wire inside is broken and there is no way for electricity to move through the heating element.

Essentially we don’t have continuity anymore if that is an easier way for you to think about it (if you need a refresher on continuity just look here.)

So if the wire inside of the heating element breaks then the heating element is bad. Switch that bad boy out you should be good to go.

I hope you found this helpful. 

Now go fix your fridge!

Want to learn more RV secrets like this that most techs don't want you to know?

When you're ready check out RV Academy.  - This is my course that costs less than what most tech's charge for a single call and instead will teach you how to be your OWN personal RV tech. I walk you through step by step exactly what I would do if you called me with a problem about your water heater, fridge, furnace, or air conditioner. You Got This!