Portable ice maker

[jlandreth]

Looking for a portable ice maker. Anyone here have experience they would like to share? Been looking at them on Amazon and as usual the reviews are all over the place.

[Mollysdad]

Me too.
The downside is they take up counter space, and although they are great at making ice, they don't store ice. You need to harvest it and move to freezer.
But...there's nothing worse than arriving at your spot for the night, settling down for a cool adult beverage and remembering you forgot to buy the 10# bag of ice.

[lsbrodsky]

A few years ago I bought a HomeLabs portable from Amazon and have been pleased with it. It makes small cubes faster than the larger size and I think their density is higher, meaning they do not melt as fast in the beverage. You really have to plan ahead. I have a large heavy duty plastic bag that we keep in the freezer and about every 4 days or so, I spend a good portion of the day making ice, while I am doing other things. It shuts off automatically when it runs out of water but one reservoir of water does not make enough ice to last very long. They are SMALL cubes. You make a batch, put 'em in the bag and keep at it.
Short answer is that it is more convenient than looking for an ice merchant, but it is time consuming. My wife uses a lot of ice so it works for ice. With my sailing background, I don't need ice. Just cold beer from the frig.
Larry

[Wayne&Sam]

We just start out with a gallon zip lock bag of ice from the home freezer. Then we use an ice cube tray to replenish.

[Robertson2]

We have a 16 year old Magic Chef ice maker that has served us very well...still going strong.

And my solution for counter space was...I created a wet bar in our 30’ Classic. The fabric storage boxes hold my bar glasses (wrapped in tube socks), liquors and mixers.

Works great if you are willing to give up 12” of floor space but gain vertical storage.

The faux wood shelves and fabric boxes came from Amazon. Perfect match to the brown ultra leather dinette.

[turk123]

This is the one we bought.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

We were sceptical at first and read the pros and cons.

You have to be there to empty the "bin". It fills up in about 60 minutes. That is almost a gallon bag full. The ice is round hollow pellets. It is soft ice. We put the ice in our freezer then transfer to our coolers. If you're vigalent and keep attending to the ice machine (my job), you can fill a large cooler (Yeti) in a day.

We've stopped buying Ice at the grocery store. That's a savings of $4 every 4 days. How many times have you gone to the store just for Ice? Gas savings also.

We keep our Icemaker outside plugged into the side of the trailer. It is not rainproof but could survive a shower or two. In hot weather we use aluminized insulation cut for our skylights, to keep it out of the sun. That will make a big difference.

Would we buy it again? Yes.

[SuperTrouper]

We have the homelabs and Larry’s observations are on point. One downside for us is that the compressor is too much for our 300 watt (650 watt peak) inverter so if you want to make ice we need a generator or shore power. We use it if we are camped happily away from stores. If it’s easy to walk and get ICE at a store we do that instead. And there’s always the old fashioned way with Ice Trays but with an LP fridge it takes a while!

Brad