An icemaker and water dispenser can be handy. But only if they work.
James Ethridge says his is hard to keep clean and the system breaks a lot.
“It’s now leaking water into here and we’re getting it iced over. You can see, we have to chip the ice out,” Ethridge says.
Consumer Reports says refrigerators with icemakers or an ice and water dispenser are more likely to need repairs. Mark Connelly says the problem is they’re complicated.
“A valve has to open up. Water has to come into the device, fill the tray. The water then has to freeze. When it’s ready a heater comes on so that the ice can be removed by these little white arms that push it into a bin below,” Connelly says.
Consumer Reports learned about icemaker problems when it analyzed survey data from 75,000 of its readers who bought a new refrigerator in the last five years.
“We found with the side-by-side refrigerators, two-thirds of all repairs involved either the icemaker or the ice or water dispenser,” Consumer Reports’ Mark Kotkin says.
The survey also covered refrigerators with top-freezers. Again, the ones with icemakers had more problems.
“We found that for refrigerators that are five years old, it’s 50 percent more likely to need a repair if it has an icemaker,” Kotkin says.
And Consumer Reports has found not all icemakers and dispensers are convenient. Some are hard to access.
The dispenser on the Sub Zero is too small to accommodate a sports bottle.
And the Jenn Air ice dispenser eats up a lot of valuable storage space in the freezer door.
The Ethridges say they’ll skip a dispenser the next time they buy a refrigerator.
If you decide you do want a dispenser and icemaker, Consumer Reports says you’ll have a better chance of avoiding problems if you choose one of the more reliable brands.
For side-by-side refrigerators, more reliable brands include Whirlpool, Kenmore, KitchenAid, General Electric and GE Monogram.
From News 24, Houston