Worth fixing, or worth replacing?

The rule, and what it was written for

The rule of thumb people arrive with is the fifty per cent one: if the repair costs more than half of a replacement, replace. It is a reasonable rule and it comes from domestic appliances, where a repair and a new machine are genuinely the same order of magnitude — a few hundred dollars against a few hundred more.

Built-in refrigeration breaks the rule's assumption. The cabinet in your opening is not a freestanding appliance that can be wheeled out and swapped; it is joinery with a sealed system in it. So the rule still applies, it simply lands somewhere else, and the honest way to show that is to do the division rather than assert the answer.

The division, on the two tables this site publishes

The repair side is the band table further down: researched for this market, parts and labor together, printed rather than kept in a drawer. The dearest work in it — compressor or sealed-system repair — runs to $2,360 at the top. The second dearest, electronic control board, tops out at $790.

The replacement side is what a comparable cabinet costs before anybody fits it: $11,600–$16,800 for the usual thirty-six to forty-two inch built-in. Half of that is $5,800–$8,400, and the entire repair book sits under the bottom of that line. That is the whole answer for a full-size cabinet, and it is why we say so plainly rather than hedging.

The replacement figure is also the polite version. Custom panels and integrated cabinetry add $2,000–$5,000 on top, and nothing on the repair side has an equivalent. A comparable built-in refrigerator, appliance only — before delivery, installation, custom panels or cabinetry. Undercounter and wine units sit below this band; replacing a column pair is usually two purchases rather than one. Appliance pricing is national, unlike the labour above.

Where it is genuinely a judgement call

Undercounter units and wine cabinets. A replacement there is $3,500–$5,500, so the fifty per cent line falls at $1,750–$2,750 — and a sealed-system repair, at $900–$2,360, can land on either side of it. On a small cabinet the question stops being arithmetic and becomes a question about the rest of the machine: how the door and hinges have worn, whether the grille was ever unobstructed, what the condenser looks like.

That is a judgement we would rather make with the panel off than over the phone, which is what the $80 diagnostic is for. You get the written estimate either way, and you are free to take it to a showroom.

When replacing really is the right answer

There are four of them here, and none is about age. The opening will not take a current cabinet without carpentry, which turns a repair decision into a kitchen decision. The condenser fin stock has corroded in the coastal air past the point where cleaning restores it — aluminium that has gone is gone. Both sealed systems have failed, rather than one of the two. Or the kitchen is being rebuilt anyway, so the panel and cabinetry cost is already committed and the comparison is no longer the one above.

Everything else on a built-in is a repair, and a technician who reaches for replacement before measuring both compartments has not done the diagnosis.

Before you approve anything, check the coverage

If the cabinet is between six and twelve years old, the manufacturer's limited sealed-system coverage is still live and it is parts only. In years 6 through 12 the sealed-system part is still covered, parts only. A homeowner may have that work done by an independent shop: the covered part is obtained from the manufacturer directly and the homeowner pays the labor. On the one repair that tops this book, that changes the number substantially, and it is the first thing we look for on a sealed-system fault. What the coverage actually says.