Ice Maker replacement or new fridge?

I can’t recall that last time I used ice, do you people not refrigerate your beverages?

Ooooooh I wish I had Sonic ice maker money, that sounds fantastic. :D

And how does a a refrigerated lemonade gives me the ultimate coldness that it needs to be for a 102 day? I think I will just fill by glass with ice now in preparation for the summer in fact.

This thread actually had me start looking at snow cone/shaved ice machines! I learned you want one that makes fluffy ice!

Fluffy is in! (looks at belly)

I have deiced to go with ice trays for a while. I may check out a new fridge when there is some kind of super sale like memorial day or black Friday. I think Ill get a freezer top style. The french door fridges seem to be very expensive comparatively.

You realise you can use more than one tray at a time, right? One is frozen while the other freezes. While I’d quite like an ice maker myself, the idea of replacing one for $350 on an ageing fridge seems insane to me.

Yes, I know I can use more than one tray at a time. I have 4 actually. I am not spending $350 on an ice maker.

My ice maker broke about 4 years ago. After doing some research and discovering that those things are crap and break all of the time, I bought 5 trays. I just empty them into the ice maker bin and I always have plenty of ice. Plus the ice crusher still works so I can still get crushed ice if I want it. My fridge works fine and I see no reason to replace it. I can easily live without the ice maker.

Also have a Whirlpool, the same age as yours if not older, so I’ll recommend some things. I too have done a full fix of my ice maker. Essentially here is the process as it happened to me.

  1. First, the same icemaker main unit as yours failed. Note that it’s a common failure item. What was explained to me is that on the left side of your pic there, condensation will build up in a freezer that is overflowing, or leaking around the edges of the seal. Slowly over time that condensation will cause a slow short there to one of the motors. You can actually see it happening if you pull out a working unit and see the slight soot around the area of one of the connections.

  2. Another high failure item is the infrared ice sensor that is on both sides of the freezer (if you have an in-door ice dispenser like mine.) Similar to the issue above, it slowly fails over time. Neither are really expensive or hard to get to/replace. You should be able to find multiple write ups online for replacing them, even a couple of youtube videos for some of it.

I made the choice to keep my fridge and ended up replacing both of those items above. I’m biding my time until a possible future home move when I’ll want new appliances anyway. So if you go the repair route and you have one of the in-door ice dispensers, note that it might not actually be the icemaker itself.

Good luck, @DeepT!

We did this in our prior house. Did you have a teenager in the house? We found our teenager would repeatedly empty the trays, use the ice, and not refill them. This led to many episodes of ranting from my wife. However, the boy would just not change his behavior.

So we sold that house and bought one with a working ice maker!

I am a bit anal about always having ice as I do not drink hot beverages like coffee or tea. Therefore I took it upon myself to empty the trays every other day and ice is never an issue. I dont have teenagers but I did share a house with my brother once and he was terrible about that. What finally put me over the top was when he would empty them and then put them back in the freezer empty!

That’s a lot of ice. There’s a slightly cheaper machine out now.
https://nuggetice.com/

I’ve never been to a sonic. So, good ice huh?

Yeah, its a lot of ice…but it makes a great conversation piece too!

Yeah, Sonic ice is heaven. The rest of Sonic…not so much, though I do like their foot long chili dogs. Their burgers have gone downhill quite a bit from my high school days.

Oh, they still have great tator tots too.

Yeah, tater tots, drinks, and chili dogs are pretty much the only thing I will get from them now.

Tots, drinks and onion rings for me oooh and fry sauce.

Speaking of ice trays. I bought one of these a while back to use for bourbon drinking, I like mine chilled but also with a cube big enough to slow down the melting and watering down. Yes I know I could use whiskey cubes, I actually like a little water in my bourbon though.

But my purchase was the first time I’d used a silicon ice tray. So cool!

Yeah, they’re the best. I have a bunch of smaller ones. So easy to pop out individual cubes.

I’ve got one of those for the same reason. Funny thing is that I now enjoy my whiskey neat so I don’t use 'em anymore - but they are great for other beverages. There’s a bar that makes a drink with a cucumber ice cube (hendrick’s gin, green chartreuse, lime, cucumber ice), and the drink gets different (and in some ways better) as the ice melts. Also great for making nice blocks of frozen stock.

Oh my god you just gave me some ideas. I make my own simple syrup and like to put in just a touch of something else every time I’ve made it just to try the differences in an Old Fashioned. I could probably make cubes with a touch of syrup, bitters and orange or lemon. So bourbon would start out iced, but slowly change to an old fashioned.

Just bought this for $1231.00, about 50% off original price because of some scratches and dings in the doors.

http://www.appliancedirect.com/kiststre25cu.html

Ice maker on old fridge died. The compressor has been howling for a while. Recently it’s been screaming like the damned in hell. 13 years old. Time to go.

Edit: on mobile. Wanted to link a pic. Will fix when home.