Our icemaker issues have been resolved, though temporarily I’m sure. In the blink of an eye, almost, I went from wanting to turn the fridge into a worm bed, into saying “I love this fridge”. That’s how I am!
Ice Maker
This is what our icemaker was producing. Huge chunks of ice. I told Vince we were going to give up glasses and start drinking out of a 5 gallon bucket because that’s the only thing big enough for these big hunks of ice.
Apparently the ice wasn’t dumping correctly so when it thought it had dumped, the tray filled up with the pre-determined amount of water and the ice that was left in the tray got frozen to the rest of the ice and the water that had no place to go poured over into the ice already in the ice bucket so even if I used ice trays and dumped them into the ice bucket, they because a solid sheet of ice once the ice maker refilled itself.
Do you know that on some models, this one of course . . you cannot remove the ice maker because something about the electronics . . it will mess up the whole fridge. There’s so much we don’t know!
We finally just gave up on the ice maker, and turned it off. That didn’t cause a problem and it stopped the water from dumping. I was able to use ice trays in the shop fridge, bring them over, dump them in the house freezer, fill them up in the kitchen, take them over to the shop and hope by the time I got there, I hadn’t spilled all the water.
When the repairman was here last week, he told Vince . . It’s about $300 for me to replace the ice maker. There are 2 screws in there. You do it and you plan to do it about every 6 – 8 months. Vince found new ice makers for this fridge (LG fridge but the least expensive place to buy the ice maker was through Sears). He ordered two of them ($85 each). They came Thursday as he was leaving home to go back to work after lunch. He said he would try to change it real quick before going back to work. It took him probably 2 minutes and that’s only because it took a minute to get the ice bucket out. You have to hold your mouth just right, and apparently say just the right number of four letter words, to get it to come out of that drawer.
Ice
Look at all that ice! Individual cubes . . no huge globs of ice! No chipping ice out of the bucket because the cubes had all frozen together. For about all my adult life I suppose, I’ve had ice makers that work and I take that for granted. I never thought much about how convenient it is to have an ice maker that works . . but now I do.
I was telling the repairman that I wished we had ice and water on the door and he said “don’t even think about it!” because of our water. We are having the water here tested for some kind of custom designed water softener system and we should have that installed within a month or so. I don’t know how much difference it will make since we already have a water softener that seems to be working good but we’ll try anything . . or so it seems!
sharon massena says
We have one of those “custom designed” water treatment systems. It’s the only way we could have water good enough to drink. One trouble is that the water is so good that I don’t want to drink other water. And yes, they do take maintenance. But without it we’d be dealing with a lot of iron oxidation.
JudyL says
Our water is already so good that it’s hard to drink water anywhere else but apparently there’s a whole lot of lime in it. My concern is that since it’s water from a shallow well, it seems to change every now and then. Last year, there was apparently more iron in it and the only reason I know is because the bird baths had a build up of rusty looking stuff in them. Now, they have a build up of white, powdery looking lime. We will be able to send unfiltered water in for testing from time to time and change out different parts based on whatever is showing up in our water at the time.
With the current water softener, I don’t see mineral buildup and only the ice maker is showing any signs of the water being a problem.
The water used for the bird bath is water from outside faucets and it doesn’t go through the softener but is a better indicator of exactly what’s in our water.
Cindy Davis says
I wish Vince was close enough to tell our maintenance man how to fix our ice maker. Good grief, no one likes hollow ice.
Marion Morgan says
Help, can’t get messages to you via comments. All information same for last five or so years.
Lisa E says
OK, I had to laugh out loud when I read “apparently say just the right number of four letter words”. Too funny!
Diana in RR, TX says
Our LG has a filter for the water line. We replace it every so often. I don’t replace it near as much as they suggest. We put in a different softener about 2 years ago with e carbon filters etc. We’re right on the edge of the “lime stone . Several huge quarries just west of us. They came out and replaced the carbon this past spring-water passed with flying colors. Not cheap but then neither are our appliances!
wanda j says
Have VIncent look into a micro-met water filter system. it has been around a very long time. They use at the hospital I worked at on all the ice machines to prevent problems.I just remember it. My parents used it back in the 60’s.
Small brass thing fill with some kind of crystals and it took care of all kinds of stuff.Hey I need one here . I’ll check it out too.Good luck.
patti says
vince is fearless! whenever dh tries one of those ‘quick fix’ notions there is always some disaster that turns it into a 3day event with more parts to be ordered or the oft heard “never seen that before” comment from those in the know. we’ve learned to set aside a big chunk of time before committing to even the smallest project!
Freda Henderson says
We have a very high lime content in our water. We have a filter in our ice msker line that filters out the lime. We change it about every two years. We use bottled water for our coffee maker cause our water stopped up a brand new coffee maker in 28 days.
Susan says
If your weather is anything like mine, you need that ice, too!