If you’ve ever heard the expression “best bang for your buck” we would tell you it applies to the Whirlpool icemaker! I’m not referencing the ice makers that come inside of most Whirlpool domestic refrigerators, although I have written about them under the Whirlpool refrigerator heading with glowing praise as well. Those ice makers use a mold where the water is poured into a metal mold, producing a crescent shaped cube. The free standing ice makers produce clear ice in a square cube shape at what can best be described as restaurant quality. The free standing Whirlpool ice makers use a tilted cold plate that has a small amount of water continuously poured on top. As the water freezes to the cold plate it gets thicker and thicker. Once it reaches a specific thickness a sensor signals for the cold plate to heat up, releasing the large solid block of ice, which slides down onto a cutter grid. The cutter grid heats up and cuts the solid block into neat square clear cubes that drop into the holding tank.

Free standing Whirlpool ice makers are 15″ wide and fit under the counter. They do require a drain connection as well as a water supply and a 115V electrical connection. When a gravity drain is not available, an attachable drain pump can be added to the product allowing for varied installation locations. The unit is advertised (as are all the various brands of this same category ice maker) to produce 50 lb’s of ice in a 24 hour period however if you read the fine print it states that the tests which produced this volume of ice requires 50 F degrees water and 70 F ambient air temperature. These ideal temperatures are seldom if ever met and so net ice production is going to be less than 50 lb’s. Exactly how much ice production you will get depends on a number of variables but suffice it to say that the Whirlpool ice maker will perform as well or better than any of its competitors in this same category.