Common fault
Why is there water under my refrigerator?
Short answer
Water under a Pacific Beach built-in has two usual sources, and one look at the water tells you which.
What is actually going on
Either the defrost drain has iced shut, in which case melt water fills the cabinet base and escapes under the door, or the ice maker's supply line has split at a fitting. Both are inexpensive repairs and neither stops on its own. Clean water at the front usually means the supply line; cloudy water sitting on a sheet of ice in the freezer means the drain.
What we check, and in what order
The drain fault is the more common of the two in Pacific Beach, and humidity is the reason. A kitchen open to marine air puts more moisture into the cabinet on every door opening, the defrost cycle sheds more water, and a drain that was already marginal fills and freezes sooner. Once it closes, the tray overflows inside the cabinetry rather than into the pan where you would have seen it.
What we do on the visit: locate the water first, because a puddle at the front of a built-in may have traveled from the back. Then the drain is checked at the trough and cleared through to the pan, the drain heater is tested where the model has one, and the supply line is inspected end to end, at the saddle valve, at the inlet valve, and along the run behind the unit where a line stapled to a stud will eventually rub through.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Reviews
What Pacific Beach customers say
Found water creeping out from under the built-in and panicked a little, because we're on the second floor of a Crown Point building and the neighbor is right below us. Drain was iced shut. He cleared it through to the pan and checked the supply line while he was in there.
Rattle behind the lower grille was driving me up the wall. Turned out to be the condenser fan with sand in the housing. Cleaned, part swapped, done. Fast, tidy, explained what he was doing.
Two other outfits had been out and both just scraped the ice off the back wall of the freezer. It came back within a couple of weeks both times. This guy tested the heater and then the seals, found one door gasket had gone slack, and the frost hasn't returned since.
Rated 4.9 from 549 customer reviews.
Appliance down in Pacific Beach?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Which parts do you fit, and is the work backed by anything?
OEM or OEM-equivalent parts, and the workmanship is guaranteed on parts and labor. Common Sub-Zero components are stocked on the service vehicle, so a model number and a precise symptom on the phone often decide whether the job finishes in one visit or two. If your unit needs something that is not a stock item, you hear that at the diagnosis rather than after the fact.
My wine cabinet reads 55 but the bottles feel warm. Is that a fault?
Often the room, not the cabinet. Measure between the bottles, not at the panel, then look at where the unit lives: a column built into an island, a bar wall or an outdoor counter rejects heat into still air, and on a warm Pacific Beach afternoon it can run without cycling off and still lose a few degrees. Ambient temperature gets measured before anything is condemned.