Ice Maker – Compact tabletop

As former tent campers, it took us a while to outfit our Airstream with a portable ice maker.

When we moved in Beauty, half-cocked, we didn’t have the faintest idea about how much ice we consumed on a daily basis. It didn’t take long before we realized that our small Dometic freezer could never pick up where our enormous side-by-side in The Big House left off with enabling Jim’s out-of-control iced tea addiction and the extraordinary demands of his 30 oz Yeti sippie-cup.

At first, we tried to solve the problem with $2 bags of ice. We’d haul them home nearly every day and dump them in the cooler. It was a clumsy, inconvenient and expensive mess. But with some guidance and after some start-up failures, we eventually graduated to a clean, neat and efficient ice-maker. Now, we couldn’t manage without one.

Smart and compact and with an elegant finish, the unit is throned beside the door upon the small 18″x11″ extension shelf of the Airstream – which seems to be designed for this very purpose – and dispatches an abundance of lovely ice with understated panache.

We never put ice in the cooler anymore. This machine is fast. Once engaged, ice is on arrival in well about ten minutes or so. It churns out energy-efficient batches with a mere 2 amps. So, we keep it running all day even when we’re on solar power.

And, that’s the story of how our new ice maker tamed the insatiable Yeti. Nothing goes to waste. We store excess ice in the freezer so Jim’s tumbler of tea is always ready to hit the road.

Yes, once we lived below our potential, but a fabulous ice maker has set us on the path to civilization. Now, we can walk and talk like real RVers. We’re more efficient, light, and abundantly cooler. And you can bet all the rain in Spain that we’ll never go back to our old bag-ice days again.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2020: We have discovered that when used every day, all day, these ice-makers only last about two years. We bought our first ice-maker, an Igloo (no longer made), in May 2016 and it died in November 2018. We bought our 2nd ice-maker in November 2018. It was a Della, and that one died in September 2020. We bought our 3rd ice maker in September 2020, an Aglucky,

INTERESTING FACT: – We did more research and there is a reason almost all small ice makers look VERY similar. It is because they are all made by the same company, HICON  who allows individual companies put their name on the ice-maker.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2022: Our Aglucky ice maker died September 2022. Yep, that’s THREE ice-makers each lasting 24 months before biting the dust. Still, we will never travel without an ice maker and we just have to accept that they only last about 2 years when used everyday. We’ve made it a hobby to buy a different brand each time to test its abilities and longevity. So we decided for our 4th ice maker, to try a completely different manufacturer. We bought a Euhomy.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2024: – Our first Euhomy Ice Maker died this month. It lasted, yep, two years. But we were so pleased with the quality, ease of cleaning, and our communication with the Euhomy company, that for our 5th ice maker since hitting the road, we bought another Euhomy. That is the one shown above. It is entirely different in every way to the design of all our previous ice machines and it appears to be easy to clean. We will see and update you here as we use it.

UPDATE JANUARY 2026: – Our 5th machine, bought in September 2024 is still going strong and working great.