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Old 08-12-2009, 06:17 PM   #1
Mini-Skoolie
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
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Year: 1990
Chassis: International
Engine: DT360
ice maker wiring

hey, I took the ice maker out of my home fridge and was going to install it in a top open freezer for my bus. The unit seems pretty simple, it looks like it's in two parts, the ice maker part that sits in the freezer, and a pump that sits outside the freezer and runs a hose in. The icemaker part has 4 wires, red, green, white, and tan and passively uses the freezer's cooling to freeze the ice (not built into the cooling unit in any way). The pump has two wires, white and tan, which I assume come directly form the icemaker leaving red and green for alternating power lines(or red for + and green for - if it's DC). My question is this, does anyone know if this whole thing runs off 120v? or is there a transformer in the fridge somewhere that converts this to DC?

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Old 08-12-2009, 09:02 PM   #2
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Re: ice maker wiring

If you know the make and model of fridge you removed it from, I can find a schematic for it. Normally, the two sets of wires would go to the ejector arm motor (that dumps the ice after it is frozen) and to the refill solenoid (I believe that is what you thought was a pump) outside the freezer compartment that allows the unit to refill with water after it has ejected a frozen load of "cubes". Some units are basically "stand alone" meaning they control timing of water fill, freezing time (usually by temperature), and eject sequence. However, some also may use a "brain" board located within the "guts" of the fridge to control the functional sequence. I haven't seen any of these that are low voltage DC unless they may be on newer, more modern units. I hope this helps.
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Old 08-14-2009, 02:57 PM   #3
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Re: ice maker wiring

Thanks for the info. I'll try to take a picture and make and model of what I have tonight. I'm sure that what I'm talking about is the pump, or some sort of water flow control unit. The main unit that sits in the fridge has the ejector built into it, I believe it has the control computer in there, too. The pump is down at the base of the fridge and is only connected by a rubber hose up to the ice maker. My icemaker looks almost exactly like the one in the howstuffworks article http://home.howstuffworks.com/icemaker.htm
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Old 08-15-2009, 08:45 AM   #4
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Re: ice maker wiring

The control panel(circuit board) is located in the ice maker itself. It is 120v..dont ask how I know this. Take lots of pictures of how you intend to mount this inside the freezer. I am going to do the same project in the future. Ice prices are out of line these days.
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Old 08-15-2009, 12:28 PM   #5
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Re: ice maker wiring

Here is the icemaker itself.

And here is the pump and hose. It looks like the pump pumps the water up to that tube where it flows down into the icemaker(no pressure at this point, just gravity). The tube is the only part of the pump system that exists inside of the freezer, and it has no standing water.


Good to know it's 120v, now I can start testing without fear of damaging the unit. I was planning on drilling a hole for that tube near the top of the freezer, then mounting the icemaker just inside with a bucket of some sort below to catch the ice. The biggest concern I'm having is hurting the freezers deficiency by having this tube sticking out. I can silicone around the tube so no air gets out, but the area on the back of the tube where it connects to the hose is a lot thinner than the freezer wall. I could insulate over top of the hose outside of this hole and probably get the efficiency back up, but then I risk freezing the water in the hose.

Smitty, to answer your question in the other thread, I was planning to power the fridge off of deep cycles with an inverter. It's an ultra efficient standup model, so I think it should not use up a whole lot of power. The biggest x-factor is how much the hole I'm going to have to drill is going to hurt the efficiency. I guess I'll just have to see how it goes. It's probably not worth the effort if the effort and the project itself were not fun. But I like complicated **** like this, so it's all good.
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Old 08-15-2009, 03:17 PM   #6
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Re: ice maker wiring

Yah, refridgerent lines! I wouldn't have a clue where to drill. Another thing. Minimize the amount of supply line in close proximity to refridgerent lines. I have a GE and the line that runs to the water dispenser has been known to freeze in the door section. You probably wont have this problem but be aware of the possibility.
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Old 08-16-2009, 12:07 PM   #7
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Re: ice maker wiring

Wow, good comments. Lemme take them one at a time.

Solenoid? I'm not entirely sure how this works. Is it actually measuring the flow and letting a specific amount of water through? Or is it just on a timer. Open-wait 15s-close. If the latter, then it seems that the amount of water pressure in the system becomes fairly important.

And yeah, as far as not poking unhealthy holes, I was hoping to be able to take off the inner paneling in order to find the best place to put this. If there is no good place, then I might be able to go through rubber surround around the door, or even the door itself. I'll know a little more Tuesday when the freezer comes.

The fridge has a little box on the bottom on one side where I assume the compressor, pump and whatnot is. There aren't any vents, so it looks like it must be radiant cold from somewhere. Does anyone know if these things are usually producing all of their cold from that one box? Or are they pumping the refrigerant around to all of the walls? Another thing I was thinking of was subdividing the interior into a freezer compartment (where the cooling unit is), and fridge compartment and use one of those temperature monitors in the fridge compartment to keep it just above freezing. This would have a huge advantage for the icemaker as my hole through the exterior wall can be just big enough for the much smaller water line, and I can go through the interior wall with the larger tube where the insulation isn't as important.
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Old 08-17-2009, 11:23 AM   #8
Mini-Skoolie
 
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Re: ice maker wiring

So, is the evaporator likely to be in the side panels all the way round? Or just on one side? If it's just on one side, then I think compartmentalizing might work.
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