My old place was a dump. I rented one of three bedrooms in an old, unkempt home. A home without the frills of modern life. I had to wash my own dishes. I had to freeze my own ice. You know, like in plastic ice trays that needed to be refilled with water almost every day in the sweltering Southern summer. But there's one thing that makes me look back fondly on that house: The energy bills were ridiculously cheap.
The utility bills at that old house were cheap because we were using less energy because we had fewer appliances to run. But what's surprising is a big bulk of that saved energy came from not having an automatic ice maker.
We all know the fridge is an energy hog in any home. But the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wanted to figure out why.
It turns out, according to TIME.com's Ecocentric blog, the average ice maker in the average fridge increases energy consumption by 12 percent to 20 percent when it's on. Which is, you know, 24/7.
Why is so much energy fed to the ice maker?
It has nothing to do with the actual freezing process; after all, your freezer will freeze water into ice with or without an automatic ice maker.
It's due to the mechanics that dump the newly-frozen ice out of the mold and into your ice tray. In order to operate in the, well, freezing temperatures of your freezer, the machine's motor requires an internal heater. And if you've ever paid an energy bill in January, you know that heating elements are expensive to maintain.
Shut it Off
So what can you do to trim down your energy bill? Shut the ice maker off.
Most automatic ice makers have a lever which tells it when the ice tray is full. By lifting that lever all the way up, you can turn off the ice maker, get back to refilling plastic trays and recoup some energy savings.
(Images: Flickr member Timothy Valentine licensed for use under Creative Commons, Flickr member Kenn Wilson licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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who leaves their icemaker on 24/7? that seems crazy. you would have way more ice then you would ever need. We turn ours on to make the ice and then turn it off when we have enough.
This is brilliant.
We've never left our icemaker on constantly. I run it until the tray is full, then turn it off. It runs for a couple days, then is off for a couple weeks. Not exactly rocket surgery.
Doesn't the lever turn the ice maker off itself? I thought that was the point of it.
Our newish model has an actual on/off switch, not just a detection lever. So when it's totally full you just turn it off for a couple weeks. I still prefer using it, as we both suck at not spilling water all over the kitchen floor when we do the plastic tray method -- but using it as needed instead of constantly is way better. And if you forget, the weird ice-dumpy noise will likely remind you.
I think the comment in the article about it running 24/7 was meant to be sarcastic humor--like you know how it is always dropping a cube or two at all hours of the day or night. Yes, they stop making ice when the lever reaches a certain point, but kicks back on when you remove cubes. I turned mine off by lifting the lever a long time ago. I don't use enough ice that when i would grab a cube, it would taste bad cause it has been in the bin too long. So i make my own using trays and it works much better.
Oh. My. God. A heater in the freezer!! That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard! I'm turning mine off right now!
Well said, Courtney!
What´s wrong about making ice cubes in plastic trays, or washing the dishes? You make it sound like a terrible thing ;-) (by the way, I don´t have an electric ice maker or a dishwasher)
mine turns itself off automatically. That little bar in picture one raises, ice pours in, if container is full the bar does not go down, ice maker stays off until ice is depleted thereby lowering the bar restarting the cycle of ice life. If only we could do that with the polar ice caps.
Are you kidding me? Built in ice makers don't cause soaring utility bills. C'mon, everybody. Think! Most (like 90%) of refrigerator/freezer combos cost $10-12 a month for the ENTIRE appliance.
Even if your ice maker comprised 1/2 this cost to run the refrigerator (which it's no where close to this!), you're talking $5 a month for the convenience of walking up to an appliance which always has a ready supply of ice and will dispense said ice into the container of your choice.
Something else that seems to have been overlooked is the fact that the most costly event for a refrigerator is opening it. Every time you open your freezer to fill the ice trays or get ice for your glass, a lot of cold air escapes and that cold air is wasted energy. I submit that the energy needed to replace this cold air is twice the energy needed to run the automatic ice maker, so in essence, the ice maker actually pays you to use it!