EC 05 is stored when the sensor reading the fresh-food compartment goes open or short for ten seconds or more, or keeps handing the control temperatures that will not settle.
- What the control is watching
- The air inside the refrigerator compartment, through the one sensor the panel displays and the control steers that side of the cabinet by.
- What makes it register
- A reading that disappears, shorts out or contradicts itself. Ten seconds of the first two is the threshold; erratic figures are judged over a longer look.
- Can you keep using it
- Usually for a few days. The compartment often stays roughly where it should, but the control is working without a reliable measurement now, so keep a thermometer on a shelf.
On a cabinet old enough to have been installed with the kitchen, what turns up behind this code is more often a joint than a component. A compartment sensor is a two-wire device with nothing inside it to wear out; what ages is the plug it sits on and the run of wire between there and the board.
That is why the reading comes and goes rather than failing cleanly. The control needs only a few seconds of silence to write the code down, and it keeps it long after the contact has recovered.
Resistance settles it. Sub-Zero specifies these sensors at 30,000 to 33,000 ohms at freezing point, so a meter either finds the part outside that range or clears it and sends the technician back along the wire.
What we usually find
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The code stored, both temperatures on the panel reading sensibly, and no complaint about the food
The joint behind the sensor rather than the sensor. Pins gone green conduct on a cool morning and drop the circuit by afternoon, which is the pattern this code catches.
Quoted after the diagnosis
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A fresh-food side running colder than it is set to, freezing salad leaves and milk at the back
A sensor that has drifted instead of failing. It still answers, so the control believes it, and it reports the compartment warmer than it really is.
Defrost heater, thermostat or sensor $280–$640
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This code sitting in memory next to the excessive-run code for the refrigerator
One fault with a consequence, not two faults. Sub-Zero's own test order settles the sensor first, because a compartment reading that is wrong holds the refrigerator in cooling long past the point it should have stopped.
Defrost heater, thermostat or sensor $280–$640
Which of these it is gets settled at the visit, before a part is ordered — Sub-Zero Repair Pro Los Angeles, (310) 844-1973.
- Written by
- Yuki Tanabe
- Role
- Refrigeration technician — controls and sensors
- In the trade
- 18 years in the trade
