What is the loud humming or rattling from my refrigerator?

What is actually going on

A rattle or a buzz that carries on with the door open is usually the condenser fan, which picks up dust, pet hair or a stray piece of packaging, or whose bearing has worn. A steady low hum you feel through the cabinets more often traces back to the rubber the compressor sits on, which goes hard over the years and stops isolating anything from the millwork around it. A high whine that stops the moment the door opens is the evaporator fan inside the compartment, and that one deserves attention quickly, because the same fan is what moves cold air over the food.

What we check, and in what order

Noise is the one symptom worth acting on while the appliance still works. A condenser fan that rattles is a fan. A condenser fan that has seized is a warm refrigerator, a compressor that has spent a week running against high head pressure, and a repair in a different price bracket entirely. The window between those two states is usually measured in weeks, not months, which is why we would rather look at a noise than at what the noise turns into.

On the coast it is the bearing that goes. Salt air reaches the fan motor through the grille anywhere near the water, dries the lubrication out and puts a growl into a motor that used to be silent. It is a slow change, so owners tend to register it only after a week away from the house. Inland the same motor stays clean and simply runs far more hours through summer, so what fails there is blade balance and the rubber mounting grommets rather than the bearing itself.

If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.