Undercounter ice machines
Why is the undercounter ice machine so loud?
Some of it is the job. An undercounter ice machine harvests, drains and, on pump models, pumps, and each of those is a noise a refrigerator does not make. Denver Sub-Zero Repair Experts separates the sounds that belong to the cycle from the ones that mean something is loose, dry or fouled.
Pattern
What we usually find
- A unit that is not level or not anchored. The installation calls for the legs to be levelled and the hinges screwed to the cabinet, and a machine standing on three legs drums through the carcass.
- The harvest, mistaken for a fault. Ice letting go of the freezing surface and dropping into a hard plastic bin is the loudest thing the machine does, and it is meant to.
- A condenser choked with dust. Behind the kickplate it runs hotter, the fan works harder for longer, and what was background becomes a drone you can hear in the next room.
- A pump running on air. On a drain-pump machine, a stalled or starved pump sounds nothing like the short burst it makes when it is actually moving water.
Most often first. Order comes from what the visits keep turning up, not from a count.
Why the same machine is louder in a fitted run
A cabinet run is a box with panels on five sides, and panels resonate. The same machine that disappears in a garage is audible in a kitchen with a stone top over it, because the top and the carcass pass the vibration on rather than absorb it.
Nothing about that is a fault. What is a fault is a noise that arrived: a machine that was quiet last winter and is not now has something in it to find.
Before you call
Two minutes, before anyone comes out
- Put a spirit level on the top of the unit and check it front to back and side to side.
- Take the bin out and see whether the noise changes; a loose bin rattles against the liner.
- Record half a minute of it on a phone, so the sound is available when somebody comes out.
Stop there. If that has not settled it by the next morning, call Denver Sub-Zero Repair Experts on (720) 903-2603 and the rest of the water path gets traced with a meter.
When it needs somebody out: Ice Maker Repair in Denver.