Wow, this is an old thread! I went to check my eBay history for part numbers to give you, but it doesn't go back that far. In the basement below the ice maker, I have a McCann pressure booster pump that boosts the water pressure to 90 PSI. After the pressure booster I tee off for the still water and for the McCann Big Mac carbonator (You can find deals on them used on eBay if you're patient). I feed the carbonator and the syrup pumps from a 20lb Co2 tank. You also need a cold plate - whatever you can find cheap - if it's got too many passages, just loop your seltzer through it multiple times, a regulator (get one with two gauges!). Everything is plumbed with .375 pex, and clamped together with oetiker clamps. You need to drill four holes in the back of the ice maker - just be careful and make sure you don't drill through anything important. There's nothing hidden to avoid, everything you don't want to hit is right where you can see it - there's basically only one place where you'll find room for four holes. I chose the hole size based on what the local hardware store had rubber grommets for that also fit my tubing. The back of the unit is foam insulation sandwiched between sheet metal and plastic. The holes in the metal and plastic need to be perfectly concentric to prevent leaks, so use a small pilot drill, and a step drill to bring the holes to size. Making the holes and feeding the hose in is the only real "hard" part. And even then it's only hard because you have to get it right the first time. The two water lines go into the ice maker, clamp to the cold plate (leave enough loops of pipe behind the unit to be able to pull it out of when you need to), then out of the cold plate to the manifold of a Wunderbar bar gun. I wish I had gotten a more traditional seltzer tower, since I hardly ever use the post-mix, but I thought the bar gun was cool! I've had this running since 2016, and so far the only thing I've had trouble with is the pressure booster pump. McCann makes two models. The "cheap" one with the diaphragm pump, and the expensive one with the vane pump (16-2170) - I don't know if the expensive one is good, but I assume it is. I do know that diaphragm pumps universally suck - they're loud and they break. Don't get one! You do need some kind of pressure booster to get the water pressure up to 90-100 psi before feeding it into the setup though.

Can anyone describe a gravity drain and a pump to drain model? Gravity drain sounds like the way a sink drain works. So would a pump drain have to pump the excess water to a nearby sink drain? I have designed my kitchen with an icemaker and an all-refrigerator, with the all-freezer in the laundry room, similar to athensmomof3. Really appreciate the great information in this thread! I think the reliability of icemakers is very dependent on the hardness of the water. Hard water takes its toll on all plumbing parts. My RO system supplier also told me that the amount of chlorine in your water has a large impact on the plumbing fixtures. Chlorine is very damaging to o-rings and plastic parts. Per the RO system maintenance man, the closer your home to the water treatment plant, the higher the chlorine, the more damage to the plumbing fixtures. He said that in order to maintain the necessary chlorine level at the furthest point from the plant, the chlorine level has to be higher close to the plant. I haven't verified what he said but it makes sense.

You can buy a countertop ice machine that will make a small amount of ice for about $200. Then you can buy an ice crusher machine for another $100 or so. The ice maker won't have a hookup to a water line, so you'll have to manually add water when you want ice. It won't store the ice in a freezer section either, it'll just melt and be reused to freeze again. The "storage" is just a small bin that you'll have to dump to put in your freezer if you want to accumulate any stockpile of ice larger than a soda bottle. The ice crusher can do about a drink's worth of ice at a time, and you'll have to either leave both small appliances on the counter all the time or drag them out when you want ice and crushed ice. If you want a restaurant type ice maker/crusher, you'll spend $4k or so and it'll be noisy, unservicable in your home, need a drain, and be a big energy hog as it won't store ice in a freezer compartment either. Now, you can get a domestic ice maker for undercounter installation, but they aren't that quiet or energy efficient, and none store the ice in a freezer compartment either. They will keep producing ice all day long though, so you will have a "unlimited" amount of ice available. All will require a water hookup, and will need some type of drain, either gravity or an optional pump purchased. There is always the manual ice tray that you pop the cubes out of, and then buy a separate ice crusher for those few occasions you want crushed ice. My mother lives with such a fridge even now and refuses to go to a in fridge ice maker. Having been spoiled by an in fridge one, I'll never go back, but that's just me. Ice makers are on homeowner refrigerator freezers because of the convenience factor. Yes, they break more often than any other portion of the refrigerator. But, to get any other type of setup requires a lot of money and space and inconvenience of different types. It's cheaper to just pay the service call on a domestic model regular ice maker when it breaks than to dedicate the money/time/space to any other setup.

Manitowoc is definitely the maker of the current unit. The older 315I was made by Scotsman. Scotsman is the best bang for your buck IMHO. They have always been reliable (for an icemaker, that is). The DCE33 is basically the same machine they have been making forever. The SCC30 and SCC50 models are the newer, more efficient version that have been out for about 3 years now. Noise is tough to say. Icemakers are noisy by nature, ice is constantly falling into a bin of varying fullness. The pump if needed will make noise when in use. I don't think you will be able to discern noise levels between the units.