Common fault
Why is my Sub-Zero refrigerator not cooling?
Short answer
Check the freezer before you worry about the compressor. On a Sub-Zero built-in each compartment has its own refrigeration, so a freezer that is still rock-hard while the fresh-food side climbs has already ruled out the expensive answer.
What is actually going on
What is left on that circuit is the evaporator fan, a defrost fault that has iced the coil, or a damper stuck shut. If both compartments are warm and the grille is blowing hot, start at the condenser: in Uptown kitchens a blocked coil causes more warm refrigerators than every electrical fault put together.
What we check, and in what order
What we check, in order. The condenser first, because it is visible through the grille in thirty seconds and it explains most of these calls in Hillcrest. Then the discharge path, since a unit boxed into a closed soffit during a remodel recirculates its own hot air and behaves exactly like a machine that is failing. Then the refrigerator evaporator: is the fan turning, is the coil iced over, is the defrost heater drawing current, is the thermistor reading a sane resistance.
Then the door. A gasket that has lost its grip along the top edge, or a hinge that has dropped under the weight of a custom wood panel, loads warm room air into the cabinet all day long. That is common in the remodeled kitchens around Mission Hills and University Heights, where a heavy panel was fitted to match the cabinets, and it is a repair rather than a reason to replace anything.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
The wine cabinet is our cellar in a Bankers Hill condo, so a few degrees matters. It had drifted warm and the display kept insisting it was fine. He found the sensor reading nonsense and a hinge that had sagged. Two hours, no drama.
Two other outfits had already been out to our old PRO 48 and both wanted to talk about replacing it. This guy knew which control generation was in the Mission Hills kitchen the moment he read the plate, ordered the right part, and the thing is still running.
Water kept showing up under the fridge in batches, never clean. He said before the panel was even off that it would be the defrost drain iced shut, and it was. Our University Heights place has the original hardwood, so I was glad it was a same day fix.
Appliance down in Hillcrest?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Answers before you call
Do you handle wine cabinets, undercounter drawers and ice machines too?
Yes, and in 92103 they are more of the work than elsewhere: a wine cabinet stands in for a cellar, undercounter drawers for a second refrigerator, a small ice machine sits in a bar run. Wine columns drift off their set point or lose humidity, drawers frost over, clear-ice machines make half what they used to. Each is diagnosed in the millwork it sits in.
My built-in cannot be pulled out of its opening. Can it still be repaired?
Yes, and in Uptown that describes nearly every unit we open. Everything a diagnosis needs sits behind the lower grille or the front panels: condenser, both fans, defrost components, boards and door hardware. Cabinet faces and flooring get covered first. Sliding it forward in a Hillcrest galley risks a stone edge and a custom panel front, and tells us nothing the grille would not.