Built for the estate kitchen, not the apartment kitchen

We repair built-in Sub-Zero refrigeration in Rancho Santa Fe, which in practice means houses that own several. A pair of columns in the main kitchen, drawers in the island, a beverage cabinet in the butler's pantry, an undercounter by the pool, a freezer column in the back hall and a wine room somewhere between them. A call here is rarely about one appliance. It is about one appliance that failed and five more that are worth ten minutes each while the tools are already out of the van.

Distance from the coast changes which part gives up first. A kitchen within sight of the water loses condensers and fasteners to salt. A few miles inland in 92067 the problem is dry and airborne instead: fine grit lifted off decomposed-granite drives and riding rings, eucalyptus litter that a Santa Ana pushes under a kick plate, landscape dust on a morning when the marine layer has already burned off. It settles on a condenser coil and stays there, and a blanketed coil does not announce itself as a failure. It shows up as a refrigerator that runs warm through a hot afternoon and is back to normal by breakfast.

The second local variable is time. A good number of these houses stand closed for part of the year, and refrigeration handles neglect worse than it handles use. Gaskets take a set against a door that never opens, an ice maker makes one batch and then freezes its own fill tube because nobody empties the bin, and a drain that dries out cements itself shut with what was left in it. We would rather look at a set of units before a long absence and again on the way back than be called to a cabinet that has to be emptied into a bag.