Igloo Ice Maker Cleaning with Hydrogen Peroxide

Introduction
So a couple years ago when I thought I we were going to be living in the motorhome it made sense to buy an ice machine. But things didn’t really turn out the way I thought they were going to and we ended up moving into a house. The ice machine got lots of use it was a really nice tool to have around especially considering that our fridge didn’t have an automatic ice maker.

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I quite appreciated having this thing, but there came a time when I unplugged it turned it off and didn’t properly drain it. Well, as you can see in the picture this is what happened to it. So here we are cleaning out the ice machine because it needs it really really bad

Remove parts
Step one for this would be to pull all the parts out of the machine which really isn’t much, the only thing you can pull out is your ice basket and down at the bottom there’s this little cover which stops chunks from coming up into the pump. This thing does not come completely apart easy and that makes cleaning a little bit more difficult, but we figured out a solution to that.

Get it unplugged, pull those two pieces out, drain it, and then you can do a quick assessment on it

Assess your machine
The assessment will be taking a really good look inside and if have an inspection mirror or a dental mirror you might want to use that to get in and look around the back side of the coils where the Ice Cube’s actually form.

You should also get back in behind that little tray and see what things look like back there. I never grabbed pictures of me getting in there with the mirror, everything was all good back in behind ours, but you can see the black stuff in the little scoop tray that actually catches the ice and dumps it. You can also see the black crap down in the little hinges there for the ice dumper thing you can see the black down under where the little filter basket was. I’m not sure what might have gone up in that tube but we’re going to address that as well.

Once you’ve taken a really good look at everything and you know what you’re dealing with it is simply a matter of patience and a bit of frustration.

Get cleaning supplies
The cleaning supplies we chose are a couple clean cotton rags, vinegar, some 3% hydrogen peroxide and a spare brand new toothbrush which got melted with a lighter to put a 90 degree angle on it.

If I had to clean around the back of the basket then I would have taken a second toothbrush and bent it the other way as well. We got away with only the one brush as the back of our little basket was really clean and I saw no need to scrub back there. At some point, this thing must have gotten some form of dirt in it.

We filter our tap water really well and only ever put bottled water into the ice maker so I’m not sure exactly how this happened but some bad water got in there or maybe somebody people stuck their hands in there to scoop ice out. I personally was very faithful about using the scoop in there, but whatever it is somehow the water that was inside got tainted and this is what it led to after sitting unplugged and warm for an extended period of time.

Perform cleaning
The way we did the cleaning on this was first with the bent toothbrush and scrubbed away at everything we could on the inside of the machine in conjunction with the remote sprayer hose from the kitchen sink use that to spray inside and rinse things out.

I had the edge of the ice maker hanging over the sink with the drain plug pulled so everything would just wash right out. Do not use boiling water to clean you machine as it could deform the plastic components. Very hot water straight out of the tap worked really well. You have to be a little bit diligent and really get in and scrub the little nooks and crannies get around the back sides of your little cooling knobs there where the Ice cubes form. We went in with a cotton rag to polish them up really well and kept alternating between flushing with hot water, the rag and the toothbrush.

The next step we took in cleaning was to get in and scrub it out with a new rag, the bent toothbrush and a couple cups of vinegar.

Once we were both satisfied, we drained everything out and installed the drain plug back in. The next step was 3 to 4 cups worth of 3% hydrogen peroxide and let it go through a fairly long ice making cycle. The machine had no problem making ice cubes out of the hydrogen peroxide. This is just straight 3% H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) like you would buy the grocery store or pharmacy, the only difference Is that were using the hydrogen peroxide that we keep in stock. It’s a lot cheaper than buying those little brown bottles. It’s not a food grade hydrogen peroxide but there’s no issue with it, we are not selling it is food grade because I don’t want to be held up to that standard. We’re selling it as utility-grade H2O2. We ran that through the machine and made a good basket of ice out of it. When we were done with the hydrogen peroxide, I dumped all the ice cubes out of the basket down into the bottom let them melt.

Save your peroxide to a spray bottle
The hydrogen peroxide was drained through the plug in the bottom into a large measuring cup and then I filled up spray bottles so we could use it in the house for cleaning.

Flush with purified water
Once all the peroxide was removed, what we did was took the reverse osmosis water filled it up ran a cycle making ice cubes.

I drained that water, threw away the ice cubes and filled it up with reverse osmosis water again.

I then ran another cycle to make a whole basket of ice cubes this time using the reverse osmosis water and a couple tablespoons of lime juice (the lime juice was just to take care of any possible odor left behind from the vinegar wash down). Once that was completed we pulled the plug, and again drained the machine.

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Once we were satisfied with the cleanliness, I left the lid open and covered the machine with a large cotton towel to allow it to dry completely.

Ice maker usage notes
Water should be drained at least weekly and new water put into the machine. Do not simply keep adding water to it.

Water will get old and stale, and some form of dirt will inevitably get introduced into your machine.

A good hot water wash will aid in keeping things fresh and flushed out.

Never scoop ice out with your hands, make sure to use some kind if scoop and be sure to keep that tool clean at all times.

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