Guides · 8 min read

An ice maker in a kitchen with no plumbing: what 26 pounds a day actually means

The card says 26 pounds a day and nine cubes in six minutes, and both are true in a way that surprises people on the first evening. How the tank, the fingers and the basket work, what a party actually needs, and what the cleaning cycle is for.

The card says 26 pounds a day and nine cubes in six minutes, and both figures are true in a way that surprises people on the first evening. A countertop ice maker is not a freezer with a tray in it; it is a small refrigeration loop that freezes water onto cold metal fingers, drops the result into a basket, and does it again, and the arithmetic of how much ice you have at any moment follows from that. Below is that arithmetic, plus the tank, the basket and the cleaning cycle, so the machine on your counter does what the card said.

How it makes ice with no water line

You pour water into a tank at the bottom of the machine, 1.5 litres on ours, and close the lid. A pump lifts water into a tray above a row of metal fingers that are chilled by the refrigeration loop; water freezes onto the fingers from the outside in, and that is what makes the cubes bullet-shaped and hollow. After six minutes, or eight on the compact model, the loop reverses for a moment, warms the fingers, and nine cubes drop into a basket above the tank. Whatever melts in the basket drains back into the tank and is frozen again. Nothing is connected to anything except the wall outlet.

That last sentence is the whole reason the machine exists. It stands on a counter, a bar cart, a boat galley or an RV shelf, it weighs about 15 pounds and it has a handle on top, and the only plumbing it needs is a jug.

What 26 pounds a day means in glasses

A bullet cube from these machines weighs roughly half an ounce, and nine of them every six minutes is about four and a half ounces of ice every six minutes, or 45 ounces an hour. Run for 24 hours that is about 26 pounds, which is the figure on the card, and it assumes the basket is emptied as it fills and the tank is refilled as it empties. A tall glass of iced water takes about four ounces of ice, so the machine keeps up with roughly one glass every five or six minutes, all day. That is a kitchen's worth of ice, not a party's.

The party is the evening the figure surprises people. The basket is small, and when it is full the machine stops until you take ice out; it does not stockpile. Twenty guests with a drink each want about five pounds of ice in the first half hour, which is two hours of the machine's output. The answer is to run the machine for the two days before, bag the cubes into the freezer as the basket fills, and let the machine top up the bucket during the party. A machine that has been running all afternoon has a basketful, not a bag.

The basket melts back on purpose

The basket is not refrigerated. It is insulated, so ice lasts an hour or two in it, but a cube left there melts and drains back into the tank, and the machine freezes it again. That is by design: nothing is wasted, and the machine never floods. It also means ice you want tomorrow goes into a bag in the freezer tonight, and it means the machine is not a place to store ice through a hot afternoon. The reviews that call the machine slow are usually describing a basket that was expected to be a freezer.

Two cube sizes, and what they are for

The compact model on our shelf makes bullet ice in two sizes, a large cube of about an inch and a small one of three-quarters. The large cube melts slower and suits a whisky or a jug of tea that sits on the table; the small one chills a glass faster and suits a soda or a cocktail shaker. The machines with one size make the small one. Bullet ice is hollow, so it chills faster and melts faster than the solid cubes from a tray, and a drink that has to sit for an hour wants the large size or a bag from the freezer.

Noise, heat and the space around it

The machine runs at under 40 decibels on the standard models, which we compare to a running refrigerator, and under 50 on the compact one; the sound is the pump and the drop of the cubes, and it is louder in a quiet bedroom than in a kitchen. The refrigeration loop moves heat out of the water and into the room through vents on the back and sides, so the machine wants a few inches of air on those sides and should not stand in a closed cabinet or against a wall with its vents blocked. It will run in an RV or on a boat on an ordinary outlet; it draws what a small appliance draws.

The tank, the cycle and the day it stands unused

Fill the tank with drinking water, because the ice is the water. The tank lifts out or drains through a plug on the base, and it is rinsed rather than scrubbed. The models with a self-cleaning cycle run water through the fingers and the tray for about half an hour at the press of a button held for a few seconds; the ones without are cleaned by running a tank of water with a splash of vinegar through one cycle and then two tanks of plain water. Do that when the cubes start to taste of the tank, and about once a month in use.

The one rule the reviews agree on is the empty tank. A machine that stands unused for more than a day with water in it grows a film in the tank, and the first cubes after that taste of it. Drain it, leave the lid open, and it starts clean the next time; the machine does not need to be on to stay ready.

The basket is small, and when it is full the machine stops until you take ice out. A machine that has been running all afternoon has a basketful, not a bag.

The first evening, in order

• Stand the machine with a few inches of air at the back and sides, on a counter, not in a cabinet.
• Fill the 1.5-litre tank with drinking water and run one cycle into the sink before the first drink.
• Empty the basket into a freezer bag as it fills; the basket melts back on purpose.
• For a party, run it for two days before and bag the ice; the machine tops up the bucket on the night.
• Drain the tank and leave the lid open if it will stand unused for more than a day.
• Run the cleaning cycle, or a vinegar tank and two plain ones, about once a month.