😁 Ice makers on fridges are very unusual here, so I use dinosaur tech all the time 😂

We always have ice trays for backup ice in the freezers. Our ice maker in L.A. is temperamental and will often quit working for a while, and then about a week later, it will suddenly start working again. At one point, I bought a new ice maker online and installed it myself, with the help of some Youtube videos. That helped a lot, but then the new one became temperamental, but at least it comes back on, unlike the old one.

I do like the ice trays with covers, and I brought a couple of those back from Cathedral City, where we have a much better and more reliable ice maker. We do turn it off when we are not there, and the first thing I do when I get back is to turn it on again. It makes huge quantities of ice.

A lot of people do not like (or do not want) ice makers, but we rely on them heavily. Growing up in Texas, we had ice in most of our drinks.

Dinosaur here too. We’ve never had an ice making fridge. We have little call for ice and I’m dubious about the hygiene of built in ice makers, especially if they don’t get much use. Also they have to be plumbed in. By US standards our fridge is microscopic, to match the microscopic kitchens in our microscopic houses. And ours is built into the cabinets, so you can’t even access the front of the door.

This was supposed to make y'all laugh. After 13 years with a built in ice maker (not through the door), I forgot for a couple of days that I could make my own ice. I thought that was funny,

I wouldn't have an ice maker if you paid to put it in. My son had black mold under his floor when his leaked, and the company that dealt with it said leaking plumbing to those fridges was his company's bread and butter. I'm perfectly capable of filling and emptying an ice tray.

I had to use the cube trays recently when our house freezer died (fridge was still fine). Luckily we had some trays and I could use the freezer in the garage. We bought a new fridge and I’m loving an ice maker again. This time the water/ice are internal.

I still have some ancient ice trays and I use them to freeze other liquid things and then transfer those - loose - into a box or bag.

I have an automatic ice maker... and I'm keep it!

Running out of ice is no laughing matter.

I do love my built-in ice crusher. :)

I had another epiphany today: I can empty the ice trays into the bin and make more ice!

Never chose to have an ice maker all of the years we were on a well. It always irritated me when my relatives who had ice makers would come over, use all of the ice and didn't refill it!

We moved into town, have town water, and the fridge we liked had an ice maker. Now I like it!

I did get irritated when we went to our river cabin and no one had cleaned out and filled the ice trays!

We stayed in an AirBnb in January (summer here) which had a special large section of a drawer in the freezer to empty ice cubes into. It was awesome :-) I like a lot of ice, especially in summer.

The bin on my ice maker isn't huge, but there is an extra, larger bin to empty the little bin into when more ice will be needed. When relatives arrive i always have to remember to do this otherwise we run out quickly with so many people wanting ice in their drinks. I guess we're spoiled.

Ice is a problem for us.

Our refrigerator is a commercial True with no freezer. Our freezer is in the basement and both overfilled and inconvenient for ice trays. For parties, we ask someone to bring a bag of ice.

For daily use, we have resorted to little counter-top ice makers that work, sort of, but give you a slender ration of small, drippy, unimpressive cubes that melt too quickly and are always in short supply when guests are lining up for refills.

I don’t have a good solution, but have thought about a ridiculous solution, which is to get something like this

https://www.homedepot.com/p/VEVOR-33-lb-Bin-Stainless-Steel-Freestanding-Ice-Maker-Machine-with-130-lb-24-H-Commercial-Ice-Maker-in-Silver-ZBJ70KGSYPPSB0001V1/319942120

but preferably used at the restaurant supply store, and then to never want for ice again, to be inundated in ice, so much ice that you could take baths in the stuff.

I’ve never owned a commercial icemaker. Maybe they are too expensive to run 24/7?

Generally (at least when I seriously researched this, some time ago), freestanding ice makers aren't chilled, so the ice has only itself to keep it cold. We don't use that much ice. Like some wine fridges, home stand alone ice makers are often meant to fit where trash compactors have been removed, whereas the small commercial ones tend to be bucket scooping wide and angled, and not easy to fit under kitchen counters.

My freezer's ice maker is small as is the bin (being German), but the bin sits in a drawer so that tossing ice into the rest of the drawer is easy enough, which is adequate for most use. For parties, I buy bags of ice, too. It's a lot more convenient, than making that much ice ahead of time, and bagging it myself, and a heck of a lot cheaper than an ice appliance. But dumping the interim trays into the drawer and refilling them seems like a good idea.

The longer white part in the picture is the cover of the ice maker, the two white sides are small drawers. I think there's butter in them, now. The empty center of the drawer is the bin the ice empties into. On the left, is ice I put in the drawer. On the right, are a gel pack for sprains and plastic ”ice” cubes which don't get cold enough to chill a beverage, but are good quick grabs for booboos, not cold enough for frostbite. Overall dimensions of the freezer is about 2.5’x7’, integrated.

John, the specs say the linked machine is “air cooled”. I think that means not frozen. Like others of the type, it requires a drain, which also points to the constantly melting thing.

Ah so. Maybe I’ll still keep my eyes out for a cheap used commercial ice maker and wire it up in the back yard, turn it on the day before a big party. If you saw “Atomic Blonde”, Charlize Theron is soaking in an ice bath after a hard day beating up, and getting beaten up by, Russian spies. It would be cool to have that much ice! But what would be even cooler is to have those huge ice cubes that take a really long time to melt in a drink. I’m sitting outside my neighborhood bar drinking a Negroni on a muggy evening, and note with displeasure that my ice cubes melted before I’d gotten through 1/2” of the drink :-(

John, When reading your complaint about the cubes disappearing before you were done with your drink reminded me that I had a tray for BIG cubes of ice for when a friend made himself Scotch on the Rock at my house. They have since moved away and I guess I have repurposed it.

It makes 4 cubes each about 2.25" square. I don't care much for the lid on this one because it doesn't stay on so I have to put rubber bands across/around. I know that better ones exist.. even round ones.

I always have ice bins whenever I have ice trays.

We bought a couple of countertop ice makers when our ice maker stopped working in L.A., but both of them had relatively short lives and got recycled. I do not recommend them.

I guess our weather and customs mean that ice just isn't that important to us! We use no ice except in gin and tonic, etc. ie a few cubes a month. So a small tray in the freezer is ample.

Very different climate indeed.

UPDATE: The icemaker was fine. The weak part in the unit design is the drawer rails and clips. The broken rail assembly angled the partially clipped in drawer just enough to keep the pip on the ice bin from connecting properly with the switch. It's fixed and we have ice! Lots of beautiiful pillbug shaped ice. Life is good.

Yaay plllog, you’re rolling in ice again!

It occurs to me that icemakers are an appliance whose time is coming even for those who haven’t seen a need.

When I moved to Portland seventeen years ago, few people had or wanted air conditioning. Cool rainy Pacific Northwest and all that. Now most of our summers have periods of >100F or smoke blankets, we have ”cooling centers” and in-house HEPA air cleaners (ok, those were bought for Covid but they come in handy for wildfires too), and everyone I know has at least a window AC unit in a bedroom. Our house has central AC, but it works poorly upstairs - not enough room for enough ductage in this old house - and I plan to add a couple mini-splits. Belt and suspenders, you know.

Perhaps icemakers weren’t a big deal here before either. But now, having rivers, nay torrents of ice on demand seems, not yet a necessity, but one skates to where the puck will be. And, of course, the Big Cube for the Stiff Drink that thinking about climate change engenders.