Replacing A Freezer Seal - A Lesson Learnt

I have learnt a valuable lesson this week.  Do not ask a trades person for help before you have fully investigated the extent of the issue and complexity of doing it yourself.

One of the chest freezers that we have has a split and bent freezer seal.  And because there is air creeping under the seal there is mold and the freezer is icing up in places.

You can see that the seal was all bent over and moldy.

So I called our local fridge guy and asked about him replacing the seal for us.  He asked for the model number and make and advised he would get back to us once the new seal had arrived.  So we waited.  And waited

I live in the country near a small town and like many small towns some of the businesses struggle to survive.  So it is infuriating that while some businesses offer fantastic service and work really hard to stay in business, there are others that make no effort to call you back, turn up, follow up and even make up lies in the hope of fobbing you off.

Yep that is pretty much what happened.  We made calls that were not returned, we waited around for appointments that no one turned up for and then we were told that they were having trouble getting the part but that they would keep chasing it up for me.  The email I got back in March read as follows.

Hi Fiona, I have negative response with regard in getting your seal,today I have had another go at getting your seal and this time have received a favourable response from Hysense , they are closed today, but have given me details of who to contact tomorrow. 

And still we waited.  And still would be if I had not taken matters into my own hands.

I called the manufacturer and asked about the possibility of getting a new seal direct from them.  The answer was a simple yes and for just $22 plus $20 postage (as it had to be sent by courier) paid for on the call.  All done in five minutes.

One week later the seal was delivered to my door and it was time to replace the seal.

When I unpacked the seal it was a bit bent as it had been folded inside the box.  So I laid it out in the sun to soften the plastic and then returned to the freezer to remove the old one and clean it all up.

When it came to removing the old seal I started at the corner and peeled it back slowly and to my joy I discovered that the seal was not glued in or fastened in any way to the freezer lid.  The seal was just pressed into a V shaped grove.  So I peeled out the seal and got on with the cleaning the lid and the top edge of the freezer where it seals.
After cleaning of all the mold I tried to dry the grove as best I could but it was hard to get a towel into the groove so I grabbed my hair dryer and used it instead.
Once I have the seal channel dried I pressed the new seal into place starting at a corner and working  out making sure that the seal was smooth and not caught up anywhere.

Once the seal was firmly pressed in I could see small areas where it was not sitting flush so knowing how plastic reacts to heat I used the hair dryer again.

You can see the small gaps around the top edge and where the seal was not smooth along the lid.
There was also a bit of a dent where the seal had been folded (on the right)

By running the hair dryer slowly around the edge the plastic softened and smoothed out and created a smooth seal against the lid.  I had to hold the hairdryer in place over the dents a bit to get them to soften and pop out but they eventually did. 

And to think I was going to pay someone to do this for me.

Now I know not every freezer seal would be this easy to replace as some models do not have a simple groove that the seal pushes into.  But my recommendation to all of you is to check out how the seal is attached to your fridge or freezer before you call a trades person into replace it for you because in some cases it is easy to replace yourself..

What have you discovered that you could replace/fix yourself?