When a repair stops being obvious

The threshold

Every figure here is one this site publishes and will honour. Where your repair sits inside its band is settled at the visit, before anything is opened up.

What it takes	Range
Door gasket or seal replacement	$260–$690
Evaporator or condenser fan motor	$330–$750
Defrost heater, thermostat or sensor	$280–$640
Ice maker, water valve or supply line	$270–$830
Electronic control board	$390–$970
Compressor or sealed-system repair	$1,510–$3,440
Buying another one instead	$12,710–$21,440

What the last row buys is a like-for-like built-in on its own, with nothing allowed for fitting it or for the joinery around it. Read down the column with that in mind and it becomes clear why so few of these cabinets are worth giving up on — and the scenarios below are the ones where that conclusion does not hold.

The scenarios

• A 500 Series that is still running A cabinet with mechanical controls and no display, still holding temperature after decades. What is worth spending on one, and what is not.
• A 600 Series with a failed compressor The costliest repair this site publishes, on the generation most likely to reach it. When the arithmetic still holds, and the conditions under which it stops.
• A cabinet built for an older refrigerant The refrigerant type is printed on the rating plate, and on the older built-ins it reads R-12. What that changes about a sealed-system repair, and what it does not.
• A compressor quote, set against the price of a new built-in The quote that makes owners think about replacing the cabinet, weighed against what a comparable built-in actually costs once installation and cabinetry are counted.
• A control board failure on a twenty-year-old cabinet The board is the part most often named and least often measured. What has to be ruled out ahead of it, and what the repair is worth when it really is the board.
• A corroded or leaking evaporator Where the leak sits decides almost everything here. What a corroded evaporator takes to put right on a built-in, and when the cabinet stops being worth it.
• An early BI Series with a dead control board A board failure on a cabinet whose refrigeration has never been touched, weighed against replacing the machine. Usually the easiest decision in this section.
• An integrated unit fitted behind custom panels When the machine is invisible, the first two guesses are its age and whether anything can still be done for it. Both are usually wrong, and both are settled the same way.
• Does the fifty-percent rule apply to a built-in? The rule of thumb says stop repairing once the fix costs half of a new machine. Run this site's own published bands through it and see what it actually recommends.
• One of two compressors has failed A combination Sub-Zero carries two sealed systems, one for each compartment. What follows when the freezer side dies and the refrigerator side is untouched.
• Selling the house within a year or two A different question from whether the fix is worth it to you. What a repair changes about the machine, what leaving it changes, and what an empty house does to both.
• The part is discontinued, and what that actually settles What a supplier means when a part is no longer catalogued, what still gets found once the plate is read, and the point at which the answer really is a new cabinet.
• The second sealed-system failure on the same cabinet One sealed-system repair on a built-in is usually worth doing. A second one on the same circuit of the same machine is a different question, and this is why.
• Water damage under the unit The leak itself is usually the cheap part. What water beneath a built-in does to the floor, the joinery and the cabinet, and the point where that changes the answer.
• When the joinery is worth more than the machine in it A built-in stands in an opening somebody framed to suit it. Change the machine and the carpentry often has to change with it, and that is where the money goes.