Ice Maker Making Small or Hollow Ice

Checks you can do safely before you call

1. Watch the dispenser flow. On a model with a water dispenser, fill a glass and compare the stream with how it ran when the filter was new. A weak trickle points to the filter or the supply rather than the ice maker.
2. Put in a new filter. Shut the supply valve beforehand if your model's instructions call for it. With a towel under the housing, swap in a cartridge made for your model and open the valve again, then run water through the dispenser as the manual directs and throw away the next few batches of ice.
3. Open the supply valve fully. Unplug the refrigerator, ease it out with a helper without kinking the line, and make sure the valve feeding it is wide open. Leave a built-in unit in place. When an under-sink reverse-osmosis system feeds the refrigerator, ask whoever services it to check its pressure and filters.
4. Look for a partial ice plug. With the power still off, shine a flashlight where the water enters the mold. Ice there narrows the flow. Shift frozen food into a cooler, then let the plug melt with the freezer door open and towels below, keeping metal tools away from it.
5. Restore power and check the freezer. Slide the refrigerator back into place, keeping the line free of kinks, and plug it in. Choose 0°F (-18°C) on the freezer control, move packages away from the ice maker and the air vents, and keep the door closed while it recovers.
6. Judge new cubes, not old ones. Empty the bin and look at the next fresh batch, because cubes that have sat for weeks shrink on their own.

When to call a technician

• The filter is new, the valve is open and the freezer is cold, but the cubes are still small or hollow two days later.
• The dispenser stream stays weak with a new cartridge, which points to the inlet valve or the supply.
• The fill tube keeps icing up after it has thawed.
• Cubes come out wet in the center while the freezer reads cold.
• Production stops entirely; see ice maker not making ice.

What happens at the diagnostic visit

The technician checks the water pressure at the inlet valve, the valve's screen and how much water each fill delivers, inspects the fill tube, and tests the ice maker thermostat against the freezer temperature measured at the ice maker. That separates a supply problem from a valve or ice maker fault before any part is quoted.

The diagnostic visit is $89 for a standard residential appliance and $129 for a built-in unit or commercial equipment; a premium brand on its own doesn't make an appliance built-in. The repair price comes before any work, and you decide. More on ice maker repair.

Brand and model notes

• LG: models with Craft Ice make round ice in the freezer alongside standard cubes, and the round ice comes out slowly by design, so a small supply of spheres is not a fault on its own. See LG.
• Whirlpool and KitchenAid: crescent-cube ice makers fill the mold for a set time, so a filter or valve that passes less water shows up as smaller crescents rather than no ice. See Whirlpool and KitchenAid.
• Kenmore: Kenmore refrigerators were built by other manufacturers, and the digits before the dot in the model number show which one: 106 is Whirlpool, 795 is LG and 253 is Frigidaire. A 106 model with a crescent-cube ice maker fills the mold on a timer like a Whirlpool, so shrinking crescents point to the filter, the pressure or the inlet valve. Give us the full model number when you book. See Kenmore.