The Scream Of The Ice Maker

There is never a good time to be awoken by what sounds like the cat and dog have taken up musical instruments and are being directed in their use by the ghost of John Cage.

It is especially not good when that cacophonous noise is being heard from the general area of the kitchen, and it's 3:30 in the morning.

But that is exactly what occurred in my home yesterday.

Immediately after being awoken by the blaring discordant noise I bolted to the kitchen to see just what in H.E. double toothpicks was actually creating that loud dissonance (having quickly dismissed the idea that either the cat or dog could possibly be that tone deaf) and promptly walked into what I can best describe as the sound made by a hundred sticks being dragged across 100 chain-link fences by 100 young boys running back and forth along the 100 chain-link fences.

Yeah, that  sound.

I quickly narrowed down the source of the noise being the freezer side of the side-by-side freezer/refrigerator. I opened the freezer door and was nearly deafened by the chattering- hammering of a thousand drunk woodpeckers - it was that much louder and that much more annoying with the door open.

I closed the freezer door to mute the death march of the penguins and determined that I would have to pull the appliance out from against the wall in order to pull the plug in hopes of silencing whatever it was inside the freezer that was making the god-awful sound.

I wasted no time in doing just that, and the sound died seconds after I pulled the plug.

I once again pulled open the freezer door and then emptied the two shelves that were located directly below the ice-maker, as I had decided the ice-maker was most likely the culprit.

I also removed the ice basket that the ice-maker filled, and the shelves themselves, in order to get an unobstructed view of what I was dealing with.

This is where I started to look for the cause of the problem:

I poked my head as far into the freezer as I could and saw what I thought was ice behind the slots of a grill that was directly below the housing of the motor that turned the auger that pushed the ice cubes down the chute that led to the outside of the freezer - I took as close up of a photo of the grill as I could to better ascertain if it was indeed ice I was seeing.

Yep, that was ice in there, and it was no doubt interfering with the small fan that kept the frosty air circulating below the ice-maker. 

I went out to the garage and got the smallest socket wrench I had and a socket wrench extender, as well as a few different sized sockets (metric and standard).

1/4" did the trick and with that in hand I first removed the housing of the auger motor and placed it on the kitchen counter.

Next I removed the cowling with the grill that covered the small fan.

Which revealed the fan...trapped by ice like an old Russian ice breaker in the Arctic sea.

So of course I grabbed a hammer and chisel and started to chip away at the ice (gently, of course).

It took a few minutes, but soon the fan was ice free.

I plugged the appliance back in and viola! The fan was once again humming along quietly.

Now all that was left to do was to put everything back together again and hope I didn't end up with extra parts or screws...