Wine cellars and undercounter cabinets
Wine Cellar Vibration and Noise
A hum or a rattle from a cabinet that used to sit there silently.
Viking Repair Service Los Angeleson site 8am to 8pm, every day of the weekcalls picked up 24/7
| What you see | Likely cause | Safe check | When to call |
|---|---|---|---|
| A low hum you can feel through the floor or the worktop | Mounts that have hardened, so the cabinet passes its own vibration on | Rest a hand on the cabinet, then on the joinery beside it | This week, if the joinery is carrying it too |
| A whirr or a flutter that comes and goes | A fan out of balance, or something light touching a blade | Note whether it stops when the cabinet falls quiet | This week |
| A rattle or a chatter from inside the cabinet | Shelves and bottles resonating against each other and the racks | Move a few bottles and see whether the note changes | Only if it persists with the racks reseated |
| A noise that changed after the cabinet was moved | The cabinet standing off level, or hard against the run beside it | Rock it gently front to back and corner to corner | This week |
The table above separates noise the cabinet is making from noise it is only passing on, which is most of this work. Row three is the commonest and the cheapest. If yours is row one, call Viking Repair Service Los Angeles at (213) 799-7879.
What the cabinet makes, and what it passes on
Rows one and four are the same argument from two directions. Every cold cabinet vibrates a little, and whether anyone hears it depends almost entirely on what it is standing on and what it is touching. Fitted into a run of joinery, with one foot short and a side panel pressed against a stile, a perfectly healthy cabinet becomes a soundboard the length of the kitchen. That is an adjustment, not a repair.
The noises worth a visit
Row two is the one to act on. A fan that has started fluttering is a fan on its way out, and in a cabinet this size there is no spare capacity to cover for it once it stops. Row three, by contrast, is almost always bottles and racks, and it answers to five minutes of reseating. Working through the table in that order saves most owners a call.
Normal, not normal, and the line between them
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Normal
A steady hum that fades into the room a minute after you notice it.
Not normal
A hum that carries into the next room or through the floor.
Time to call
Once it has been doing that for a week.
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Normal
Air moving somewhere behind the cabinet while it runs.
Not normal
A flutter, a scrape or a knock repeating at the same point.
Time to call
This week.
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Normal
A faint chink from the bottles as the door shuts.
Not normal
A continuous chatter for as long as the cabinet runs.
Time to call
If reseating the racks does not settle it.
A cold cabinet is never silent; it should just be no louder than it was last year. Call Viking Repair Service Los Angeles at (213) 799-7879 and describe the row you are on — that sentence is worth more than a guess at the part.
Safe checks before the visit
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Take a few bottles out, seat the racks squarely back on their supports and replace the bottles with a little space between them. Glass resting on glass is the loudest thing in most of these cabinets.
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Rock the cabinet gently corner to corner. A foot not carrying its share turns an ordinary hum into something a whole run of joinery repeats back at you.
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Listen with the door open and then with it shut. A sound that stops the moment the door opens belongs to something the door switches, and that narrows it before anybody arrives.
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Stop there. Nothing further is an owner job on a built-in: the sealed circuit, the wiring behind the grille and anything that needs a panel off belong to the visit. Call Viking Repair Service Los Angeles at (213) 799-7879 and say which of the checks above changed anything.
Asked about this one
- Is the vibration doing harm to what is stored in there?
- That is not a claim this shop makes either way. What is worth acting on is the cause: hardened mounts, a fan out of balance and a cabinet standing off level all get worse rather than better, and the fan in particular is the one that eventually stops altogether and takes the cooling with it.
- Written by
- Ambrose Fitzwilliam
- Role
- Service technician — refrigeration and sealed systems
- In the trade
- 25 years in the trade