Forum menu
I'm hoping some of you lovely people can help me diagnose why the ice-maker in my fridge-freezer has stopped making ice.
Facts...
- The freezer door has a panel which can dispense chilled drinking water and ice.
- The drinking water dispenser works fine.
- The ice-maker makes all the noises as though it's working - motor spins to flip the ice tray, the pump whirrs as though it's trying to fill it up with water, but no water goes into the tray.
- Around the back is a solenoid (pics 1-3 below), a white pipe goes into the back of it from the water caddy in the fridge. A blue pipe and another white pipe come out of it and head under the fridge. 4 wires go into it, 2 purple, a brown and a white.
- At the underside of the front I can see the other end of the blue and white pipes, they have couplers joining them to pipes which run up into the freezer door to the ice and water maker (pic 4).
I had suspected that the solenoid might be broken, however it's £75 quid for a replacement (I think that's the right one, but it doesn't list my freezer in the models) so I'd rather not buy one unless it's def the issue.
At the weekend I disconnected the couplers on the hoses underneath and swapped them over. I then waited for the ice maker to request water. When it did water poured out of the drinking water dispenser?!?!
I tried activating the drinking water dispenser while they were swapped, to see if it filled the ice-maker, but it didn't.
Does this suggest that there is a blockage in the ice-making hose (from the coupler to the door) rather than a solenoid issue? The hose in the door is pretty inaccessible, so I'm not sure how I could resolve that, if it is the issue.
Any comments, suggestions, debug ideas would be handy.
We do have an ice-cube tray, but we also have a teenager who seems to like to have 10-gazillion ice-cubes in her drinks (which she leaves until they go tepid obviously)
Have you tried blowing through the pipe that goes up to the ice maker to see if it's blocked?
Have you tried blowing through the pipe that goes up to the ice maker to see if it's blocked?
Last night I had a bit more of an investigate after someone else suggested that.
I uncoupled the pipes at the bottom and used an old washing line to rod the pipe (oo-er missus). I got it all the way to the top of the pipe in the door but it wouldn't come out of the end. I then tried rodding from the top and it would only go about an inch or so.
There's a fairly tight bend at that point, I'm wondering whether lime-scale has built up there and blocked it off (we're in a hard water area).
I used a CO2 canister with my tyre inflator to blow into the hose, but nothing came out of the top.
I'm now toying with using a syringe to add lime-scale remover into the top of the pipe to try to break it down. Other thoughts/suggestions welcome 🙂