As former tent campers, it took us a while to move our bloomin’ arses and outfit our Airstream with a portable ice maker.
When we moved, half-cocked, out of the big house and left our fridge door ice-maker behind, we hadn’t the faintest idea how much ice we consumed on a daily basis. You see, the problem is, Jim’s 30 oz tumbler has a serious iced-tea habit, and there’s just not enough space in our small Dometic freezer to accommodate enough of those tiny ice trays to satiate the darn Yeti.
Back in the day when we first starting traveling full-time, we were buying $2 bags of ice nearly every day and hauling the heavy cooler in and out of the trailer. It was a clumsy, inconvienent and expensive mess. But, with an efficient ice-maker, a new era of LIB arrived and were persuaded to ditch our guttersnipe ways.
Smart and compact, in its 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 ice with understated panache.
Once engaged, it is always prompt and ice is on arrival in well under ten minutes. 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. It makes two sizes of cubes – small and large – but, like us, our ice cubes prefer to live large.
And, that’s how our ice maker tamed the 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.
IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: We have discovered that these ice makers in the low to mid $100’s only last about two years if used everyday, all day long, like we do. We bought our first one, an Igloo, in May 2016 and it died in November 2018. We bought our 2nd one in November 2018, a Della, and it died in September 2020. We are now on our 3rd ice maker, bought in September 2020, an Ikich, and expect it to last until late 2022. We feel being honest here on our experience is important information for you to consider. We will never travel without one of these ice makers and accept that they only last about 2 years when used every day, all day long. Also, we buy a different brand each time to check on its ability to last. UPDATE APRIL 2021 – The Ikich ice maker developed a problem. We reached out to Ikich via Amazon and received a new one within 4 days. Wow! What service!!
