Common fault
Why has my ice maker stopped making ice?
Short answer
The shape of the cubes tells you which repair this is, so look at them before anyone quotes a part.
The reasoning behind that
Undersized, hollow or half-formed cubes mean the mold never filled to its line, and that comes back to an overdue filter, weak pressure where the supply meets the inlet valve, or a fill tube with ice in it. A machine producing nothing whatever, in a freezer that is still perfectly cold, has a harvest problem instead: the module, its thermostat or its motor. Older Mission Hills kitchens add a third possibility, because the water line feeding a retrofit ice maker was run long after the house was plumbed, and it is often a long length of narrow tubing that never delivered full pressure to begin with.
How the diagnosis goes
We start on the water side because that is where the answer usually is. We measure pressure at the inlet valve, check the age of the filter, and look at the fill tube for ice. A machine fed by a marginal line will make small cubes indefinitely without anything actually failing, and fitting a new harvest module to that line produces exactly the same ice as before at considerably greater expense.
Scale is the local complication. San Diego water leaves mineral deposits, and they build up on the inlet valve screen, inside the fill tube and on the mold itself, where they slow the release of the cubes and make a healthy harvest cycle look faulty. An overdue filter compounds both. This is also why ice in these houses starts tasting flat before it stops appearing, and why we ask when the filter was last changed before we ask anything else.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Reviews
What Mission Hills customers say
We inherited an old 500 series with the house off Fort Stockton and had already been quoted for a replacement. He said no, it needs a fan and a sensor. Two parts. A new one would have meant rebuilding the opening the cabinetmaker scribed around it.
Our 1920s Craftsman has a modern Sub-Zero that stopped cooling on a Saturday night. They arrived within two hours and fixed the compressor issue. Professional service that respected our historic home.
The technician diagnosed our wine cooler temperature problem quickly and explained everything clearly. Fair pricing and excellent workmanship. Highly recommend for Mission Hills residents.
Rated 4.9 from 617 customer reviews.
Appliance down in Mission Hills?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Do you fit genuine Sub-Zero parts?
Factory-approved parts, made for the model they go into, on every repair. Pattern components cost less, but a generic evaporator fan or thermistor tends to be back on the fault list within a season. Older units are where that matters most: what keeps a twenty-year-old built-in running is a part matching the original specification, not one that merely fits the hole.
How do I know what the repair costs before I commit to it?
You get the price before the work starts, as one figure covering parts and labor, quoted once the fault is known rather than guessed at. You agree it and it does not move. If the diagnosis turns up a second, unrelated problem, that is a separate number you approve, not a line that appears on the invoice once the technician has gone.