Storing and draining
Clear-ice evaporator
The cold surface a clear-ice machine grows cubes on, layer by layer, instead of filling a tray.
- What it does
- The evaporator is the cold half of a clear-ice machine. Water is sprayed up into a bank of inverted cups and freezes in layers until a cube has formed in each one, which is why the finished cube comes out clear rather than clouded through the middle. Harvest then warms the same surface until the cubes let go.
- Where it sits
- In the upper part of an undercounter ice machine, behind the water shutters and above the storage bin, so that a released cube only has to fall. Nothing about it is visible from the kitchen with the door shut.
- How it is tested
- By running the machine and watching a whole cycle, because the fault shows in the cube rather than on a meter. Sub-Zero's own pressure check belongs here: a cup of water poured behind the curtain changes the spray if the supply is short. Then the surface is read cold, for scale, for cups that stay filled and for a harvest that stalls.
- What the work costs
- Ice maker, water valve or supply line: $300–$820, after the flat $89 diagnosis.
Pattern
What we usually find
- Scale laid down over months, so the spray no longer wets every cup evenly and half the batch comes out small while the rest looks right.
- Cleaning and sanitising left undone. Sub-Zero asks for the full procedure twice a year, and poor water quality shortens even that.
- A harvest that runs long because the surface cannot warm through its own coating, which welds the new batch to what is still sitting there.
- Water arriving short, which starves the spray and is mistaken for a failing evaporator until the supply is measured.
Most often first. Order comes from what the visits keep turning up, not from a count.
The word to keep hold of is layers. A tray freezes a whole volume of water at once and traps whatever is dissolved in it; this machine builds a cube a film at a time, and the clarity is a by-product of the method.
That is also why it is so sensitive to a weak supply. A thin spray still freezes. It just freezes less.
Repair or replace
What usually happens to it
Descaled long before it is replaced. Sub-Zero built a cleaning cycle around this surface: a short harvest clears it, cleaner goes in through the spray area, and the machine rinses itself out afterwards. Replacement is never a simple part swap here, so what Denver Sub-Zero Repair Experts proves first is that the surface is scaled and not starved of water.
Two follow-ups
Is this the same part as the mould in a built-in ice maker?
No. A built-in column fills a tray, freezes it and warms the tray to release the cubes. The undercounter clear-ice machine sprays water into inverted cups and grows each cube in layers instead. Different hardware, different faults, and Denver Sub-Zero Repair Experts will not diagnose one from the other.
My cubes went cloudy. Is the evaporator finished?
Rarely. Cloudiness follows the water far more often than the metal: minerals in the supply, a filter past its cycle count, or a clean that is overdue. Run the cleaning and sanitising procedure first, and judge the next full batch rather than the one already sitting in the bin.