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. The cubes come in a choice of densities but we take ours thick.
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.
IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: 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, 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, and it 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.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2022: – 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. So we decided for our 4th ice maker, to try a completely different manufacturer. We now own a Euhomy. Since we’ve only had a few months we have no idea how long it will last, but we will keep you updated here. Our new Euhomy is the featured ice-maker on this page.
UPDATE MAY 2023 – Here we are 8 months into our new Euhomy ice-maker and we are quite pleased. This design is much easier to clean and therefore more sanitary. That’s a huge plus. It takes the Euhomy longer to make the first batch, but once it starts producing ice it makes more product within the hour than other machines we have tried.
So, if the Euhomy lives well past the two-year mark, we definitely think it is worth twice the cost of our previous ice slaves. But it must be noted that the superior construction and superior ice quality of this machine comes with a cost – it is quite a bit heavier than the previous ice-makers we have tried. Still, we’re pleased with it’s performance and our fingers are crossed that it will last much longer than two years. More to come … Stay tuned!
