Product review (3 stars): We had it good there for a while
I'm in the market for a new machine with some very specific features this time. I loved this one while it lasted, with a few exceptions. First, I bought this because an ice maker in the freezer simply took up too much ice cream real estate. This was a creative solution and worked like a champ for nearly 2 years. One day it just stopped working altogether, I think it's the pump. To be absolutely fair, we have really hard water here which I think caused mineral build up and killed the pump. I'll use filtered water next time, lesson learned. I would have rated this one higher (despite a relatively short lifespan which may or may not have been my water's/my fault) however, cleaning this thing is a bit of an event. You can drain it completely but I'm not sure that guaranteed all of the water was drained from the machine, like from the internal tubing or pump. There is no way to cycle water through the pump manually so you don't KNOW what is in the pump line. You could have mold building up in there and you just have no idea. There is also no great way to clean the upper grooves. You can't let them sit and soak and scrubbing them didn't really yield great results. This is why I wasn't eager to diagnose my broken ice maker and fix it. In a perfect world I should take it apart, fix the pump and replace all of the tubing. To replace it I'm looking for one that allows me to manually cycle water through the pump to clean it thoroughly. Until then, I'll just buy bags of ice for parties.