Common fault
Why is my wine cooler not holding temperature?
Short answer
Take the reading at the bottles rather than off the panel. Wine columns fail quietly: the display holds at the number you set while the cabinet sits several degrees higher, because the sensor is reporting from a spot the circulating air actually reaches and the racks are not that spot. On a dual-zone unit, one zone holding while the other drifts is genuinely good news, since the working zone proves the sealed system is healthy and the fault is in the drifting zone's own evaporator, fan or damper. On wine, a two-degree drift is a fault, not a tolerance.
Wine storage density in La Jolla is high enough that this is a routine call for us rather than an occasional one, and where a unit is installed turns out to matter as much as its age. Wine cabinets get placed in the best-looking part of the house, and in this town that regularly means a wall of west-facing glass with a view toward the water, or an open-plan room on the Mount Soledad side that takes full afternoon sun. A unit rejecting heat into a room that climbs every afternoon runs a long duty cycle for its whole life. It holds fine for years, and then it starts losing the upper zone first, because the upper zone has the least margin to give.
The other complaint we get constantly here is fog or condensation on the inside of the glass, and it is usually misread as the cooler running too cold. It is not. A glass-doored wine cabinet has to keep that pane above the dew point of the room around it, and in a coastal kitchen on a saturated gray morning the dew point outside the glass is high. If the pane heater circuit has failed or the door seal is no longer sealing evenly around its full length, the glass drops below that dew point and fogs. The repair is the heater circuit or the door, and turning the setpoint up does nothing except put the wine at risk.
If that matches what your appliance is doing, say so when you call — it tells us which parts to bring, and most of these are finished in one visit.
Reviews
Our Sub-Zero freezer went out on a Sunday. They answered immediately and had a technician at our home in Bird Rock within two hours. Incredibly professional and fast service!
- ★★★★★
The technician who fixed our wine cooler was so knowledgeable. He explained the problem clearly and gave us a fair price. Excellent service for our home near La Jolla Shores.
- ★★★★★
Finally, a repair service that operates 24/7 as advertised. They were able to come late in the evening to fix our refrigerator in the Muirlands area. Lifesavers!
Appliance down in La Jolla?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.