Anyone know about gas leaks from freezers?

[AngelDog]

Ours smells strongly of gas/glue when you open the door. It's losing its coldness. It's been making funny noises for a few weeks, although it stopped doing that recently.

It's a Zanussi under the worktop one and about 5 years old.

One repair co. said that a gas leak is almost certainly not repairable. The manufacturers said they couldn't tell without an engineer's visit. I'm loathe to pay for an engineer just to tell me it's dead. OTOH I don't want to buy a new freezer if this one is recoverable.

Any experiences?

Thankfully we have another freezer to try to squeeze some of the food into.

is it a frost-free?

I don't think so - at least, the instructions don't say so (and it isn't frost-free in practice!)

I'm not a freezer person, but the two most common faults see to be (1) ice blockage of ducts in a frost-free freezer (2) loss of gas pressure.

(1) does not apply in your case (shame as it is easy to fix)
(2) is usually uneconomical in a domestic appliance. I have a friend who is a commercial and boat refrigeration engineer, and he tells me he refuses to re-gas domestic freezers, since after they've lost pressure once, they will probably do it again, and he'll get the blame.

Thanks - it sounds very much like (2) and that fits with what the repair company said (they told me they wouldn't re-gas freezers). Looks like I need to look for a new one.

Sorry to say that loss of gas is how our last 2 fridge freezers have died.