Local water · Highlands Ranch
What Highlands Ranch water does to your ice
If your Sub-Zero’s ice changed and nothing else did (cloudier cubes, white flecks, a crust on the bin), the first suspect in Highlands Ranch is the water, not the ice maker. Here is where it comes from, what shows up in a cube, and how we tell it from a failed part.
Where the water comes from
Highlands Ranch gets its water from Centennial Water & Sanitation District, not directly from Denver Water, through what the district calls a conjunctive-use system. Surface water from the South Platte River, Plum Creek and Dad Clark Gulch is stored in South Platte Reservoir (6,400 acre-feet, finished in 2007), McLellan and Chatfield reservoirs and treated at the Joseph B. Blake plant. Groundwater comes from wells in three deep bedrock aquifers under Highlands Ranch: the Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills.
On average about 85% of a year’s water is surface water. The deep groundwater is mostly non-renewable, so it is kept mainly as a backup, and part of the surface supply is bought from neighboring providers.
Why the blend matters to an ice maker
An ice maker freezes whatever arrives at its valve. River water and deep well water carry different dissolved minerals, and the share of each is not fixed. The district’s 2023 testing shows the swing: total dissolved solids averaged 341 parts per million, across 102 samples ranging from 114 to 716. It publishes no hardness figure, so we quote none.
In a tray-type ice maker, water freezes from the outside in. Pure ice forms first and pushes air and minerals toward the middle, so the last part to freeze is the cloudy core. More dissolved solids, more white in each cube and more flecks as it melts in a glass.
What you may notice when the water changes
- Cubes with a white or milky center, sometimes after months of clearer ice.
- A chalky film on the bin, the ice chute or the dispenser paddle.
- On an undercounter clear-ice machine, slower harvests or thinner ice as scale builds on the freezing plate.
- A faint chemical note when the filter is old: the district disinfects with chloramine, which takes more filter contact to reduce than chlorine.
None of these means a part has failed.
What the filter does, and what it does not
The cartridge in a Sub-Zero is a carbon filter. It improves taste and odor and catches sediment, but it leaves dissolved minerals in the water, so a fresh one will not turn cloudy ice clear. Change it on schedule anyway: an overdue cartridge restricts flow, and a mold that only part-fills makes small or hollow cubes, a different problem from cloudy ones.
Water or fault: how we read it
| What you see | Points to | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudy or white centers, cubes full size | The water | Nothing to repair. |
| White flecks as the ice melts | The water | Wipe the bin now and then. |
| Chemical taste or smell | An overdue filter | New cartridge, washed bin. |
| Small, thin or hollow cubes | Water flow | Filter first, then valve or supply line. |
| Bin empty, freezer cold | A fault | Supply, valve, frozen fill tube, module or bin sensing. |
| Cubes fused into a block | A fault | Ice thawing and refreezing: freezer temperature or a door seal. |
What we ask first on a Highlands Ranch call
Before we order a valve or a module: when did the ice change, and what else changed that week? Is the filter in date? Does the dispenser run at full speed? Has a neighbor noticed the same? If the answers point at the water, we say so on the phone and there is nothing to book; if they point at a part, the visit finds which. Sub-Zero Repair Highlands Ranch, (303) 729-0972.
Repairs: ice maker repair and refrigerator and freezer repair.
Questions about the water
Why did my ice change when nothing in the kitchen changed?
Because the water can change without you doing anything. Centennial Water blends river water with deep well water, buys part of its supply from neighboring providers, and its 2023 samples ranged widely in dissolved solids. A shift in the blend can show up as cloudier cubes from one month to the next.
Does Highlands Ranch water harm the ice maker?
Not in the ordinary sense. Minerals leave film and scale on the parts the water touches: the mold, the bin, a clear-ice machine’s freezing plate. A tray-type ice maker in a freezer tolerates that for years. Undercounter clear-ice machines are the exception: let scale build and they harvest slowly, then stop, so keep up their cleaning cycle.
Is cloudy ice safe to use?
The white comes from air and the dissolved minerals that are in your tap water anyway, and the district’s 2024 report says its water met all EPA and state drinking-water health standards. If the ice smells or tastes wrong rather than just looking white, change the filter and wash the bin.