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+--- Thread: Couple Questions (/showthread.php?tid=20013)
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RE: Couple Questions - terracore - 07-31-2018
The standard side-by-side fridge has pumps that operate the ice maker and water spigot. (The one we had in Alaska had two separate pumps, I don't know how many our newer model has). They are TINY pumps and I'm not sure how much water pressure they are expecting but the design seemed to be more about limiting the water flow, not creating it. The idea for putting the water on top of the fridge and letting gravity do the work might be the best yet so long as the owner is physically capable of putting the water up there, but I have no experience with this idea.
The icemaker works by triggering the fridge pump to put a set amount of water into the gizmo after it drops the ice into the bin below. It continues this until the bin is full. The icemaker knows the bin is full when the mechanical switch (basically on/off switch, usually a metal wire or plastic paddle) can no longer drop or slide into the top of the ice bin because there is too much ice there. They can be a vertically dropping or horizontally sliding arm but the technology is the same. Most units have a method to manually move the trigger mechanism to turn the icemaker off regardless of the quantity of ice.
Whatever system you devise, I hope you post your results here.
RE: Couple Questions - Hunt Stoddard - 08-01-2018
I will definitely post results.
To add to the conversation, here's an amazon RO system that also sells an ice maker kit with it, so they seem to think that whatever pressure comes out of RO is sufficient to run an ice maker. As I recall RO systems put out pretty puny pressure.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J2DGTD8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1