How to Drain and Store a Nugget Ice Maker

Nobody thinks about this until the second season. A countertop ice maker gets put in a cupboard in October with the reservoir half full, comes out in June, and smells like a pond. The machine is usually fine; what happened inside it was entirely avoidable and takes about twenty minutes to prevent.

The same procedure applies to three situations that look different and are not: putting a machine away for a season, packing one into a camper for travel day, and shutting one down because you are going on holiday for a fortnight.

Why standing water is the whole issue

Every machine in this category recirculates. You pour water into a reservoir, a pump moves it over a freezing surface, ice forms, and the meltwater from the unrefrigerated bin drains back down to be frozen again. That closed loop is efficient and it means the machine is never empty by itself.

Leave that loop full and switched off and you have a warm, dark, enclosed volume of standing water with a food surface. Frigidaire is blunt enough about this to recommend, in normal daily use, changing the water in the reservoir every 24 hours. A manufacturer that wants the water changed daily is telling you something about water left for three months.

The organism you are avoiding, and what to do if you already have it, is on mold and slime in a nugget ice maker.

The procedure

1. 1. Switch off and unplug

   At the outlet, not just the machine's own button. Everything below involves reaching into a compartment with a motor-driven mechanism in it.

2. 2. Empty the bin completely

   Take out all the ice. Leaving it to melt is leaving water in a machine you are about to close up, which is the entire problem this procedure exists to avoid.

3. 3. Clean it before you store it, not after

   Whatever is in the water path now will still be there in three months, with time to grow. If your machine has a clean cycle, this is the moment to run it, ideally with a cleaner rather than plain water.

4. 4. Drain the reservoir through the drain plug

   Every machine covered here has one, usually on the back or the underside. Position the machine over a sink or a tray, remove the plug, and let it run out fully rather than tipping it.

5. 5. Remove and wash the loose parts

   Ice basket or drawer, water tank, scoop and any internal baffle. Wash in warm water with diluted detergent, rinse thoroughly, and dry them separately.

6. 6. Dry the interior and leave the lid open

   The step almost everybody skips. Wipe what you can reach, then leave the lid or drawer open until the inside is genuinely dry to the touch. A sealed damp machine is how biofilm starts.

7. 7. Store it upright, somewhere that does not freeze

   These are compressors. Store the machine on its feet, not on its side or back, and not anywhere the residual moisture in it could freeze.

8. 8. Let it stand before you restart it

   After storage or transport, stand the machine upright and leave it before switching on. NewAir's manual says two hours after levelling; Silonn's says 24. Follow whichever applies to your machine.

9. 9. Discard the first ice

   Silonn's manual says to discard the first four cycles after a long period of disuse. Even where a manufacturer does not say so, the first batch has been made with water that sat in a stored machine.

Finding and using the drain

Every machine covered on this site has a drain plug, and it is consistently the least documented part of the appliance. It is usually a rubber bung on the rear or the underside, sometimes behind a small door, and on some machines there is a second one for the bin as well as the reservoir.

Two manufacturers describe the drain step directly. Silonn's instruction manual, at the end of its self-cleaning procedure, describes plugging the drain and removing the excess water over a sink. NewAir's NIM030SS00 manual, in its Cleaning & Maintenance section, describes draining dirty water and refilling as part of the cycle.

The one thing worth insisting on: drain it, do not tip it. Tipping a machine to pour water out of the lid moves water sideways into compartments the drain does not serve, and some of that water is now somewhere it cannot evaporate from.

Storing somewhere that freezes

A garage, a shed or an unheated cabin adds a second failure mode that has nothing to do with hygiene. Water expands as it freezes, and the pump, the tubing and the reservoir of a countertop ice maker are not designed to accommodate that expansion.

A machine that has been properly drained and dried has nothing in it to freeze, so cold storage becomes a non-issue. A machine with a cup of water still sitting in the pump housing is a gamble. This is the strongest single argument for doing the drying step properly rather than deciding it is close enough.

Running one in the cold is a separate question, and the published limits are on what temperature an ice maker needs.

Bringing it back

Two manufacturers publish a stand time, and they disagree by an order of magnitude, which is worth knowing rather than averaging.

• NewAir NIM030SS00: wait two hours after the unit has been levelled and positioned before first use.
• Silonn SLIM21: stand upright for 24 hours before operating, and discard the first four cycles of ice.

Both are asking for the same thing: time for compressor oil and refrigerant to settle back where they belong after the machine has been moved. If your own manual gives a figure, use it. If it gives none, the longer of these two costs you nothing but an evening.

Then throw the first batch away. It will have been made from water sitting in a machine that has been closed up, and no amount of drying makes a first batch worth drinking.

For a week away, not a season

The full procedure is for storage. For an ordinary fortnight's holiday, the short version does almost all the work:

1. Empty the bin and drain the reservoir.
2. Leave the lid open on the counter.
3. Rinse and run a batch when you get back, and discard it.

That is five minutes and it is the difference between coming home to a machine and coming home to a job. The full cleaning routine, for when it is genuinely due, is on how to clean a nugget ice maker.