No ice on a summer weekend feels like an emergency, and most of the time it is a short repair once the water path from the stop valve to the bin has been checked link by link — instead of an entire assembly ordered on a guess and installed a week later.
$95 run-through · ice maker repair labor from $228 · part on its own line · how the money works
Ice is water, a solenoid, a fill tube, a filter, a mold and a thermostat, and the run-through takes them in that order. No ice at all is usually the water: a stop valve someone knocked under the sink, a fill tube frozen through, a solenoid with a dead coil, a filter untouched since the kitchen was remodeled. Small, hollow or bad-tasting cubes are the freezer running warm or a filter past its date. Ice on the floor of the freezer is a fill tube dribbling. Only after all of that does the technician watch a full harvest and decide whether the assembly itself has quit.
Standalone and under-counter machines are everywhere on this map — boat houses and docks along the Stono and the creeks, outdoor kitchens in the Country Club streets, wet bars in the Folly rentals — and they get a run-through of their own: condenser, circulation pump, evaporator plate, bin thermostat. Salt air eats a dock machine’s condenser inside a few seasons, and the card is honest about when a coil cleaning buys a summer and when it does not.
Beach rentals run their ice makers at three times a household’s pace from Memorial Day on, and the office times those visits to the check-out gap so a machine dead on Thursday is harvesting before the Saturday arrivals. Managers get the card by text and the street book keeps a page per unit; a pattern across a building goes in the book so the next unit’s part rides along.
Johns Island wells scale the solenoid and the fill tube on a schedule, and a bad taste on well water is a filtration question before it is an ice-maker question. The technician says so, fixes the machine, and notes the water in the street book so nobody replaces an assembly that will scale again by spring.
The likely, inexpensive cause is measured before the unlikely, expensive one is named.
| What you notice | What gets read first |
|---|---|
| No ice, water still dispenses | Stop valve, fill tube, solenoid coil, filter |
| Small or hollow cubes | Freezer temperature, filter, water pressure |
| Ice tastes of the line | Filter, water that sat, then the source |
| Slab under the bin | Fill tube dribbling, mold thermostat |
| Under-counter unit running, bin empty | Condenser, circulation pump, evaporator plate |
| Dock machine dead in June | Condenser salt, fan, start components |
An exhausted filter, or water that stood in the line — almost every time. Replace the filter, throw away the next several harvests, and if the taste persists on a well it is a treatment question rather than an ice-maker one; the card says which.
Seldom. Most visits end at a solenoid, a fill tube or a filter, and watching one full harvest before anything is ordered leaves the expensive part on the supplier’s shelf.
Salt on the condenser and a compressor working at its limit in a hot boat house. The coil gets cleaned, the fan and the start components metered, and the card is frank about what a machine in that spot is worth.
Docks and boat houses on the creeks, beach rentals on the changeover calendar, wells on Johns Island.
Wet bars in the refits; creek-front boat houses.
Under-counter units in condos; tenant turnover.
Tell the office what it is doing; the run-through does the rest.
$95 run-through, any machine, any street on the map · labor from-rates published · parts on their own line