Questions we get asked

A flat $129 diagnostic covers the visit and the diagnosis. It is credited toward the repair if you go ahead with the work.

You get a written estimate before any part is ordered or any labor begins. Nothing is opened up on a maybe.

Then you have paid $129 for a diagnosis and a written estimate, and you keep both. There is nothing else to pay and no pressure applied. Plenty of people take the estimate, decide the appliance has had its run, and use the paperwork to argue a replacement.

Labor is warranted 90 days. Genuine OEM parts are warranted 365 days from the date of installation.

Genuine OEM parts only — no aftermarket substitutes.

It depends which part. Common wear items — door gaskets, hinge hardware, thermistors, fill valves, drain pumps, igniters — ride on the van, and those are usually a one-visit repair.

Control boards and assemblies that are specific to a production revision get ordered, and they take days rather than hours. That is why we ask for the rating plate before the visit: model and serial together, because the same model designation can cover several revisions and the part that fits one does not always fit the next. You are told which category your fault falls into when we quote it.

Usually, and the reason is the cabinetry. A built-in was installed before the counters and panels went in around it, so replacing it is a carpentry project as well as an appliance purchase. Repairs that would be marginal on a freestanding machine are often clearly worth doing here.

The exception is a sealed-system failure on a cabinet that has already spent a long time running at elevated head pressure, where the repair can cost a large share of what the cabinet is worth. We measure first, quote in writing, and say plainly when we think the money is better spent on a replacement.

We can, but you should call Thermador first. Warranty work has to be routed through the channel the manufacturer names, and a repair by an outside shop can affect that coverage. We would rather you use the free option while it exists and call us when it runs out.

The cheap physical things, in a fixed order: supply voltage measured at the appliance under load, airflow and clearance around the cabinet, door and hinge geometry, then the fill and drain paths, then the duct and the make-up air.

Electronics come last and only with a measurement behind them. A board is the most expensive part in most of these appliances and the least often actually at fault.

Yes. Salt is hygroscopic — it holds moisture against aluminium condenser fins and turns ordinary kitchen dust into a paste that packs the gaps rather than blowing through. Heat rejection drops, head pressure climbs, and a compressor that should cycle off simply stops doing it.

The same chemistry roughens hood blower bearings and finds its way into hinge pivots. Refrigeration that would go five years inland between condenser cleanings can be visibly loaded here in eighteen months.

It is common. This coast sees roughly 68 thunderstorm days a year, and the damage is rarely a direct strike — it is the repeated small surges and brownouts on the way in and out of an outage that age a power supply until one day it does not come back.

A board that fails the morning after a storm has usually been failing for a season. Whole-house surge protection is the only thing that meaningfully changes the odds.