Mercer Island, WA · Sub-Zero only

Cold kept exactly
where you set it, quietly.

An independent Sub-Zero refrigeration workshop that covers one island and one brand. Sealed systems, defrost circuits, ice heads and wine zones — diagnosed properly, priced before anything is opened up.

  • Built-in, integrated and undercounter
  • Flat $89 service call, credited back
  • On the road 8:00 am – 8:00 pm, seven days · phone answered 24/7
  • 12 month parts and labor warranty
Undercounter stainless unit with its lower panel open, a multimeter and nut drivers laid out on a folded towel

Serving 600 · 700 · integrated columns · undercounter · wine

Refrigerator pulled clear of the cabinets with the rear machine compartment open, a charging hose fitted to the compressor
Panels off, floor covered, unit out. The slow part of the job is the part that protects the kitchen.

The workshop

One island, one brand, one bench

We service Sub-Zero built-in refrigeration on Mercer Island and nothing else. No ranges, no dishwashers, no laundry, no second brand taken on to fill the calendar. The whole van is stocked for one product line, which is why the part you need is usually already on it.

Most of the island’s cold storage is built in behind cabinetry that cost more than the appliance. Pulling a 700 series column out of a panel-ready surround without marking a stile is a slow, careful job, and it is the part of the work we are fussiest about. Felt on the floor, panels off before the unit moves, everything reset to the original reveal.

The bench side matters too. Boards get read, not swapped on a hunch. Sealed systems go under gauges before anyone says the word compressor. If a unit is genuinely past economic repair we will say so and you will not be charged for the second opinion.

What we will not do

  • Quote a repair over the phone without seeing the unit
  • Replace a control board to find out whether that was the fault
  • Move a built-in without taking the cabinetry panels off first
  • Leave before the cabinet has run back down to its set point

Standing

The terms, stated plainly

Four things worth knowing before you let anyone take the panels off a built-in. All four apply to every call.

  • 18 yrs

    On built-in refrigeration

    Sealed system, defrost and control work on 600, 700 and integrated series — the platforms that make up almost every island kitchen.

  • Same day

    On most morning calls

    Mercer Island is a single route, not a corner of a regional territory. A call before eleven usually gets an afternoon slot.

  • $89

    Service call, credited back

    The $89 service call covers the visit and the full assessment, and it comes off the invoice in full if you approve the repair. The repair number is agreed before anything opens up.

  • 1 year

    On parts and labor

    Every repair carries a twelve month warranty on the part fitted and the labor to fit it. Sealed system work included.

Services

Four things break, and we fix all four

Everything below is Sub-Zero built-in work. If your unit is doing something on one of these lists, we have almost certainly had the same model apart this month.

  1. Hands holding a flashlight and a multimeter at the compressor of a built-in refrigerator with its base grille removed

    01

    Refrigerator Repair

    Built-in and integrated Sub-Zero refrigerators: sealed system, evaporator and defrost circuit, control boards, door seals and the panel-ready cabinetry they sit in.

    • Fresh food side has crept up to around 50°F while the freezer is still rock hard
    • Compressor runs more or less constantly and the cabinet never quite reaches the set point
    • Water pooling under the crisper drawers, or a sheet of ice forming on the rear wall
    What this repair involves
  2. Empty freezer compartment standing open, white liner with an air vent grille and two bare shelf rails

    02

    Freezer Repair

    Freezer drawers and full-height freezer columns that will not hold temperature, frost over between defrosts, or short-cycle without ever pulling the cabinet down.

    • Display reads 0°F but the ice cream is soft and packaged food has gone slack
    • Heavy frost back on the evaporator cover within a week of a manual defrost
    • Freezer drawer dragging on its rails or freezing itself shut along the gasket
    What this repair involves
  3. Hands lifting a bin of cubes out of an undercounter ice maker, the ice head and its water line visible above

    03

    Ice Maker Repair

    Clear-ice heads and standard freezer modules: short fills, missed harvests, slabbed bins and the water-supply faults that usually get blamed on the module.

    • Hollow, undersized or cloudy cubes coming out of a clear-ice head
    • Bin filling with one welded slab instead of separate cubes
    • Ice production stopped completely a day or two after a filter change
    What this repair involves
  4. Kneeling worker with a screwdriver at the rails of an undercounter wine cooler, bottles resting on stainless shelves

    04

    Wine Cooler Repair

    Dual-zone wine storage that has stopped holding its zones apart, sweats on the glass, runs loud, or has lost its lighting and control response.

    • Upper and lower zones drifting three or four degrees away from their set points
    • Condensation forming on the inside of the glass door and on the top shelf bottles
    • Interior lighting flickering, or staying lit with the door closed
    What this repair involves

Before and after

Two calls, start to finish

Both of these arrived described as a dead machine. Neither of them was. The readings are what the cabinet was actually doing, not what the display claimed.

Interior rear panel opened inside a cold cabinet, exposing the evaporator fan and the drain trough beside it

Refrigerator · East Seattle

On arrival

Fresh food cabinet at 51°F, freezer at 0°F, owner told by a previous company that the compressor had failed and the unit needed replacing.

On completion

Fresh food evaporator fan motor seized and its circuit iced over. Fan replaced, coil cleared, cabinet back to 38°F in under two hours. Compressor untouched.

Dust-matted condenser coil and fan behind a removed base panel, a vacuum nozzle and brush waiting on the floor

Wine storage · First Hill

On arrival

Dual-zone unit with both zones reading four degrees high, glass door sweating, and a bin of corks the owner was convinced had been cooked.

On completion

Perished door gasket pulling room air across the glass, plus a blocked condenser behind the grille. Gasket replaced, condenser cleaned, zones holding within one degree.

In their words

What the island says

5.0 / 51,162 reviews


  • Frost was back on the evaporator cover a week after we defrosted by hand. Twice. He read the circuit instead of swapping parts: terminator open, sensor well out. No frost since.

    Bill & Nora F. · East Seattle · Jan 2026

  • Ours sits in a wall of walnut with nothing to spare. Panels off, felt down, unit walked out. The fresh food fan had seized behind an iced-up shroud. New motor, drain cleared, thirty-eight degrees by the time he left.

    Genevieve R. · Town Center · Sep 2025

  • After the long outage last fall the zones sat three or four degrees high while the display claimed all was well. The control board had taken a hit. Read, proved, replaced.

    Bettina Z. · Mercerwood · Jul 2026

Questions we get

Asked on the doorstep, answered here

The same six come up on nearly every call. If yours is not here, the phone is faster than any form.

How quickly can you get to a unit on Mercer Island?

The island is a single route rather than one stop on a regional loop, so a call placed before about eleven in the morning usually gets a same-day slot. Town Center and East Seattle are the quickest, but nowhere on the island is more than a few minutes from anywhere else.

The fresh food side is warm but the freezer is fine. Is that the compressor?

Almost never. On a dual-evaporator Sub-Zero the two cabinets are cooled by separate circuits, so a warm fresh food side with a healthy freezer points at that evaporator, its fan, or a defrost fault on that circuit alone. It is a repairable fault and it does not mean the unit is finished.

Do you work on panel-ready and integrated installations?

Yes, and it is most of what we do here. Panels come off before the unit moves, the floor is protected, and the reveal is reset to where it started. If a surround has to be modified to get the unit out we tell you before anything is unscrewed.

What does the service call cost and is it credited?

The service call is a flat $89. It covers the visit and the full assessment, including gauges on the sealed system where that is relevant, and it is credited in full against an approved repair. You get the repair price before anything is opened up.

Do you carry parts on the van?

The common failure items for the widespread model families — evaporator fan motors, defrost heaters and terminators, thermistors, water inlet valves, door gaskets and the usual control boards. Sealed system components and cosmetic parts are ordered against your model and serial number.

Is it ever worth replacing rather than repairing?

Occasionally. A twenty year old unit with a leaking evaporator buried in the foam, or a cabinet with structural corrosion, is a genuine replacement case and we will tell you that plainly. Most of what we see is a two hundred dollar part inside a machine that has fifteen years left in it.

Book a visit

Take a slot on the island round

Booking runs through one page rather than a mailbox, so the time you pick is the time that is held. Nothing about your kitchen is stored on this site.

Base grille off an undercounter unit with the compressor exposed, multimeter, drivers and a bagged spare part on a work mat
Coverage
Mercer Island, WA 98040 — all four quadrants of the island
Hours
8:00 am – 8:00 pm, seven days
Phone answered
24/7
Service call
$89 flat, credited against an approved repair
Warranty
12 months, parts and labor
(206) 208-3377
  1. Pick a slot

    The booking page shows the real calendar for the island round. Choose the window that suits and it is held straight away.

  2. Tell us the cabinet

    Model and serial number off the plate inside the cabinet, plus what the unit is doing. Half the diagnosis is usually done from that alone, and it decides what goes on the van.

  3. We arrive and read it properly

    Temperatures logged, defrost circuit and controls tested, gauges on the sealed system where the symptom calls for it. The $89 service call covers all of it and comes off the invoice in full if you approve the repair.

Book online

The crew works 8:00 am – 8:00 pm, seven days. The phone is answered 24/7, so if the cabinet is above 42°F right now, call instead — that one is time sensitive and should not wait for a booking slot.