Ice Maker & Dishwasher Winterization

[BRS50]

The service tech at my dealer showed me the way they quickly winterize the ice maker on an Excel. They don’t have time to keep the fridge on for a day to get the freezer cold and slowly make pink ice.

In the outside access panel unplug the ice maker at the 110v outlet. Then pull the two power leads from the pump, polarity doesn't matter. You’ll need to make a short lead with a 110v male plug on one end and ideally two crimp on connectors on the other like the pump leads. In a hurry, I did it the quick and dirty way this year with the twisted bare ends pushed through the holes in the spade connectors. After connecting to the ice maker pump leads plug into the 110v outlet and you’ll hear your water pump cycle. I ran it for 20-25 seconds and let the ice bucket catch a little overflow antifreeze. You can see the pink stuff in the exposed clear line coming out of the pump. Best of all you can flush the system in the spring the same way with water in instead of antifreeze, no long wait for the pink ice to clear.

The dishwasher is a lot easier, just a minute on rinse cycle did the trick. In hard freeze areas it's a must for these appliances with their own pumps. Tech said the expensive ice maker pump will crack with water freezing inside leaving you with a $200+ repair bill.

[rockintom]

Thanks for sharing this Brad. It stuff like this where we can learn and then help others. You'd think something as important as this would be covered in a service bulletin (or owner's manual). Thanks again, together we can Git R Dun!!! rockin'

[Ray,IN]

An ice maker has no pump. They do have a solenoid and screen filter to control water flow. The actual ice maker is designed to freeze, only the lines to and from the solenoid must be drained and the filter bowl removed and dried out. The blue and brass fittings in your pictures. If the blue is not removed it prevents the bowl from draining. When you remove the lines attached to the solenoid they gravity drain for my MH.

[Solask]

Creating a lead to apply 110V to the solenoid from the outside is a good short cut to the instructions that want us to go inside and manually force q harvest cycle. However, I contend that after reading instructions for winterizing my Dometic 1350 in both the MH manual and the Dometic manual, we are only concerned with clearing the solenoid. No where in the instructions does it state to blow air up through the ice maker supply line or pink it. Notice in the procedure you are removing both the inlet and outlet sides off the solenoid and clearing the solenoid only..
Including both sets of instruction.. For me, it was just as easy to simply remove the solenoid.

[Solask]

Originally Posted by Ray,IN

An ice maker has no pump. They do have a solenoid and screen filter to control water flow. The actual ice maker is designed to freeze, only the lines to and from the solenoid must be drained and the filter bowl removed and dried out. The blue and brass fittings in your pictures. If the blue is not removed it prevents the bowl from draining. When you remove the lines attached to the solenoid they gravity drain for my MH.

Ray, Brad was referring to the water pump firing up when he electrically opened up the solenoid, filling the lines with pink...

[BRS50]

Ray you're correct, calling it a pump (on the ice maker) was wrong it's a solenoid as you mentioned. However we label the parts this is the short cut the dealer uses to winterize ice makers. It seemed to work well when I tried it and saved me a lot of time vs turning on the fridge and waiting for the ice maker to pull the anti freeze in with a number of ice making cycles.

This was my first time winterizing our new Excel and after running through it once it's pretty simple. Since I'm using anti freeze I can't see bothering with blowing out the lines. Now that I'm familiar with the location of all components and the valve positions I think I could winterize this coach quickly especially with this short cut.

[Solask]

Brad, but do you understand what we are saying about not needing to suck pink all the way through the ice maker?

[BRS50]

Ray,
I'd be worried about that thin line running up to the ice maker, it sure seems it would be prone to freezing and potential cracking. Since letting the anti freeze run up to the ice maker is simple and easy and the dealer recommended it can't hurt.