Common fault
Why has my ice maker stopped making ice?
Short answer
Pick a cube up before anybody quotes you a part. That is a two-minute call to Point Loma Sub-Zero Specialists on (858) 375-1585.
The reasoning behind that
Light, crescent-shaped or hollowed out in the middle means the mold was still filling when the cycle moved on, and that is water: a filter nobody has dated, pressure that has fallen away at the valve, or a fill tube iced down to a straw. No ice whatsoever, in a cabinet that is still freezing perfectly well, sends us the other way: to the module, its mold thermostat, or the ejector motor. Those are opposite repairs, which is why the cube comes first. In the older Point Loma houses there is a third possibility sitting behind the first, because the line feeding the refrigerator was added long after the house was plumbed and hard water has been narrowing it ever since.
How the diagnosis goes
Pressure at the valve is the measurement everything else depends on, so it happens early. A refrigerator feed in Loma Portal or the Wooded Area is nearly always an afterthought: small-bore line teed in wherever was easiest, taken a long way round, often through a valve nobody has touched since it was fitted. Scale collects at every restriction along that route. The machine then fills fractionally short on each cycle, the control has no means of noticing, and the bin fills with cubes that cave in between your fingers.
If nothing is coming out and the cabinet is still cold, we move to the harvest side. The module drives the ejector arm and calls for the next fill, the mold thermostat decides when the ice is cold enough to release, the motor does the physical work. Any one of the three can stop and from outside the cabinet the symptom is identical. Before condemning any of them we thaw and inspect the fill tube, because a tube frozen closed produces the same silence for a fraction of the money, and on models with a fill tube heater that heater is tested at the same time.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Appliance down in Point Loma?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
My Sub-Zero is boxed into the cabinetry. Does it have to come out?
Almost never. The machine compartment and condenser open off their own grille — above the doors on a full-height built-in, at the base on undercounter and drawer units — and evaporators, fans, thermistors and boards all come out from inside the cabinet. That matters in Point Loma, where plenty of kitchens are narrow galley runs with original wood underfoot and walking a built-in out risks more than the repair is worth. If a fault needs the unit brought forward, you hear it before anything moves. Point Loma Sub-Zero Specialists, Point Loma: (858) 375-1585.
Is a twenty-year-old built-in still worth repairing this close to the ocean?
Usually, yes. Nothing exotic stops them: a fan motor behind the evaporator, a heater in the defrost circuit, a temperature sensor, a gasket gone hard, the module driving the ice maker. None of that justifies buying an appliance, and replacement is joinery rather than delivery. The local caveat is corrosion: a fin pack gone soft after years of salt air is a condenser, not a cleaning. Point Loma Sub-Zero Specialists answers that on (858) 375-1585.