Independent service companyRefrigeration only: built-in and integrated columns, freezers, wine storage, undercounter units and ice makers.Mon–Fri 8am–6pm · Sat 9am–4pm · Sun closed
Two sealed systems. One cabinet. One of them has failed.
Every full-size Sub-Zero refrigerator carries two compressors and two evaporators. That is
why a warm fresh-food compartment above a freezer still holding 0°F is a
specific fault with a short list of causes, not a contradiction. Refrigeration only: built-in and integrated columns, freezers, wine storage, undercounter units and ice makers.
Mon–Fri 8am–6pm · Sat 9am–4pm · Sun closed40 miles by road from Fruit Cove and St. Johns County.90 days labor, 365 days parts, genuine OEM components.
A warm compartment and a cold one in the same cabinet. That is where the visit starts.
Diagnostic$80
Labor warranty90 days
Parts warranty365 days
Service radius40 mi by road
Dual refrigeration
The two compartments do not share air, a coil, or a compressor.
Upper system · fresh food38°F
Held cool and deliberately humid so produce does not dry out. Its own compressor, its own
evaporator, its own defrost circuit. When this system fails the freezer below carries on
reading correctly, which is exactly what makes the symptom confusing to describe over the phone.
Lower system · freezer0°F
Held frigid and dry, because moisture in a freezer becomes frost. Ice production needs this
compartment at or below 5°F; 0°F is the
recommended setting. A freezer running warm at 5°F or above explains
most complaints about thin, hollow or slow ice.
Any description of these cabinets that refers to the compressor is describing a different
appliance. There are two, and on most service calls one of them is working perfectly.
Before you call
The 48°F rule decides whether a cleaning will help.
Sub-Zero publishes a threshold worth repeating exactly. If the fresh-food compartment is
above 48°F against a 38°F setpoint, the unit
is unlikely to recover from a condenser cleaning. Above that line something has failed rather
than fouled.
Below it, clean the condenser first. It is the one cause a homeowner can address without tools,
and it is the most common reason a cabinet stops holding setpoint in August. The second half of
the rule matters as much: if temperatures have not returned to setpoint within
24 hours of a cleaning, the unit needs service.
Where the condenser sits is a series question, not a general one. Classic and legacy Built-In
cabinets, and the 430 wine unit, are top-mounted behind a flip-up grille. Designer, legacy
Integrated, the 700 Series and the 427 are bottom-mounted. Cleaning interval is six to twelve
months, six with pets, and not at all on a cabinet under six months old.
If the display is showing a code, leave it. The stored code tells us when the excursion began and
how the control responded. Clearing it before the visit throws that away.
Northeast Florida
Storm season damages boards weeks before the cabinet fails.
This region gets around sixty-eight thunderstorm days a year, and every one of them puts
transients on residential branch circuits. A built-in refrigerator is a permanently connected
appliance. It sits on that circuit through all of it, year after year, and it is the one
appliance in the house nobody unplugs.
The damage is rarely immediate, which is what makes it hard to report. A control board that
absorbed a transient often keeps running for weeks before it drops a defrost cycle, stops
reading an evaporator sensor or starts one sealed system and not the other. By the time the
compartment drifts, the storm is long forgotten. When you call, tell us anyway: an outage or a
strike in the past month is diagnostic information, not small talk.
Extended outages are their own event. Parts of this metro went days without power after
Matthew in 2016, Irma in 2017 and Helene in 2024. When power returns, both sealed systems
restart into a warm cabinet and run at full duty for hours to pull two compartments back to
setpoint. Start components, condenser fan motors and tired boards fail under that load rather
than during the outage itself.
We do not publish control-board part numbers as definitive. Board fit is serial-dependent on
these cabinets, the wrong board is money spent twice, and the plate is read on site before
anything is ordered. On the coastal ZIPs a second mechanism runs alongside all of this:
chloride in the air corrodes aluminium condenser fin stock and hinge hardware, and a corroded
coil cannot be cleaned back to health.
Service area
Fruit CoveLate 1990s onward, kitchens fitted 2005 to 2020 · 3 mi by road
NocateeMostly built out in the last fifteen years · 14 mi by road
Ponte Vedra BeachLarge 2000s kitchens, many since renovated · 22 mi by road
MandarinDeveloped over decades, every vintage present · 7 mi by road
DeerwoodOlder Southside stock, kitchens renovated at least once · 14 mi by road
World Golf VillageTwo generations, early 2000s and current build-out · 22 mi by road
The fresh-food side runs its own compressor and its own evaporator, so a warm refrigerator sitting above a freezer that still holds 0°F is a specific fault with a short list of causes.
A freezer column is a single-purpose cabinet with one sealed system and no fresh-food side to borrow air from, so frost, drain ice and defrost faults present differently than they do in an over-under unit.
Wine cabinets hold a narrow band far above freezing, so the failures that matter are drift, humidity and light rather than the frost and defrost problems that dominate food refrigeration.
Ice production has a temperature floor, a fill volume and a harvest cycle, and the three of them fail in ways that look identical from the front of the cabinet and are not.
Undercounter units live in the hottest, most airflow-restricted position in the kitchen, and most of their faults trace back to the grille, the drain or an ambient temperature the cabinet was never rated for.
Drawer units carry their whole seal on a moving part, so alignment, runner wear and gasket compression cause more warm-drawer calls than any refrigeration component does.
We do not service cooking equipment. Sub-Zero does not build ranges, and a company that claims
to repair them is telling you something about itself.
Model series
Both vocabularies, because nearly all of the work is on legacy cabinets.
Built-In became Classic and the plate prefix changed from BI to CL. Integrated became Designer and
IT, IC, ID and IW became DET, DEC and DEU. The cabinets in Northeast Florida kitchens mostly still
carry the old names, so this site uses both.
The manufacturer's published coverage is 2 years full parts and labor,
5 years full sealed system, and 12 years limited sealed system, parts only.
In years 6 through 12 the sealed-system part is still covered, parts only. A homeowner may have that work done by an independent shop: the covered part is obtained from the manufacturer directly and the homeowner pays the labor.
On a compressor or evaporator failure that is frequently the difference between a repair and a
replacement. Bring us the serial number and the install date before you approve anything.
Full warranty detail.
Latest service notes
Years six to twelve — the coverage most owners missThis is the single strongest honest argument for using an independent shop, and it is missed constantly because it sits inside a warranty most owners assume expired at year five.
The door is not lockedTwo of the most common door complaints are not faults at all. Knowing which is which saves a service call, and knowing when a door genuinely is wrong saves a gasket.
Salt air, condensers and the coil you cannot cleanOn the coastal ZIP codes the condenser problem is not dust. It is metal loss, and it is the reason a beach cabinet ages differently from an identical one ten miles inland.
Fresh food side sat at fifty-two while the freezer below never wavered. He traced it to a stalled evaporator fan behind the rear panel, showed me the seized bearing, and had the compartment back down before he left.
Alicia P.2026-06-14
★★★★★
The lower drawer would not close the last inch. He stripped the runner, found a bent slide from something being forced shut, and replaced the pair so that the unit tracks straight again.
Phoebe A.2026-02-18
★★★★★
The door alarm kept sounding at night with the door plainly shut. The magnetic seal had rolled at the hinge end and the cam was worn. New gasket, cam adjusted, and the alarm has not gone off since.
Lucia D.2025-12-03
Independent service company
Book a diagnostic
$80 flat diagnostic, credited toward the repair. Written estimate before any part is ordered or any work begins.
Mon–Fri 8am–6pm · Sat 9am–4pm · Sun closed. Scheduled appointments only. No after-hours or emergency service.
