Talk to a technician

Calling us from the harbor, the pier or the inland tracts

Have the model number to hand if you can reach the plate. On Sub-Zero built-in refrigeration the plate is inside the door frame, or behind the lower grille once the grille is off; on a Wolf, Viking or Thermador range it is usually on the frame behind the door. After that, tell us which compartment is wrong rather than that the appliance has broken. Each compartment on this equipment has its own sealed system and no air crosses from one to the other, which is why a warm refrigerator above a hard-frozen freezer is a different job — different parts on the truck — from a cabinet losing temperature all the way through.

Any code on the panel, read out exactly as it appears, plus a rough idea of when the kitchen was fitted, decides which generation of control board and which fan motor get loaded before we leave. Kitchens here split two ways and it changes what we bring: older remodels near the water with a built-in, a wine cabinet and a gas range, against the newer inland houses full of columns and undercounter refrigeration set into island runs. Two minutes on the phone is what separates a one-visit repair from a two-visit one, and in August that difference is worth having.