Seemed like a great idea at the time but from day one, has been a massive fail. Maybe once a week I get a clean âdropâ of ice cubes into its tray⊠the rest of the time, the cubes at the far end are broken off half way and you end up with a bunch of crushed ice as well as a few cubes, and having to either just refill on top of the leftovers or find some way to remove them that doesnt involve knives or hot water. Its annoying. There has to be a better design for non-plumbed fridges.
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Are your ice block trays built in to the fridge or removable?
As we have not had our LG icemaker fridge connected to the water supply as our plumber said that it would be very expensive to do so, I simply use 3 x 12 cube ice block trays stacked on top of each other, at an angle to each other, on the shelf beside the icemaker storage bin.
The top and the bottom ones empty easily and cleanely, but the middle one requires a bit of pesrsuading, and often has bits of broken ice blocks remaining it the bottom of the moulds.
I simply bang it upside down on the edge of the sink to give it the message.
Before I bought the moulds from KMart and then Woollies for around $5 per set of 4, I was buying 3kg packs of party ice which was costing a lot of money and the bag was taking up too much room in the freezer.
Alas, there is not a lot of room in the freezer compartment, which is why I was attracted to the twistie maker. After discovering what crap it is, I tried to revert to ordinary trays, but that left not much space for actual food, so I now try to tolerate the madness that is the twist icecube maker. The entire assembly can be removed but the space it leaves is pretty useless. What would make more sense to me would be a small shelf in the top of the freezer compartment, where you could have separate trays for ice. Not something I might have thought of, were it not for seeing such a design in a small fridge I was considering buying to replace my freezer on top model. I think it was a Hisense.
[edit] Yes, it was⊠https://www.appliancesonline.com.au/product/hisense-312l-bottom-mount-fridge-white-hrbm321
Photo snatched from the AO site.
Edit #2: this is the offending item
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Sure. But, as I explained, using separate trays leaves me hardly any space for storing needed food. I have a couple of $2 trays in the cupboard, butâŠ
In any case, the issue is not whether I can have ice cubes, but the fact that the design is crap. I should not (nor should anyone else) have to be seeking alternatives. The design needs to be changed.
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We have a rack on which they sit purchased from Daiso, if you can remove the cube maker and use a couple of tiered racks you may get some space back. We use larger trays in the pantry for storing potatoes, onions and such. They are easily put together and you can fit about 3 trays on the larger ones with adequate space on each tray. For our freezer the trays are just two tiered.
Howards Storage World sell similar units I think they call them âeasy buildâ, the legs and trays come in various sizes so you may be able to find the ones to suit your space. As I donât have the dimensions for your space so just suggesting it may be worth a look.
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Thnks! Iâll take a look. However my desire for a bottom mount fridge may override, my back is never happy about having to bend and stoop for vegies.
That said, the design is still a dud.
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When our son-in-law and his family moved interstate around a decade ago, he gave us a near new two door fridge he had bought very cheap as the owner had decided to leave knuckle marks in the freezer door, and was presumably in a hurry to exit the rented premises.
I think it was a Westinghouse and it had a pair ot turn-over ice block trays in the top of the freezer section which worked perfectly, and it was in our garage downstairs.
After the disaster we had had with the previous piece-of junk Kleenmaid/Amana icemarker fridge, we did not want to connect the new LG icemaker fridge we bought to the water supply as we were in the process of preparing our home for sale.
I would simply leave a large Decor container below the ice block moulds and tip the ice blocks into it, when required, take the container upstairs and empty the ice blocks into the ice block storage bin in the fridge. The tipping moulds worked perfectly.
These ice blocks worked perfectly with the crushed ice function in the fridge, just as the hollow cyncidral commercial party ice did with our current fridge of the same model, but as this one does not handle the ice crushing of the ice tray blocks very well., I have adopted to use whole ice blocks safely sterilised with scotch,
you just canât be too carefull.
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Iâve removed that frustrating âtwistâ Ice cube tray and now have a little space in the freezer where nothing else fits.
Iâve bought a nice tray which is taking up space on the shelf.
We can make do, but I agree: why should we!
Who would design such a useless piece of junk!
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We have the same thing. In a fridge we had about 12 years ago we had these and loved them. Our new fridge has them and we still find them excellent. Very, very occasionally we have one ice cube that doesnât dislodge, but just put it back in and turn - out it comes.
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our Westinghouse has upper ice maker trays and a collector tray below them as shown in the photo #2. Itâs usually impossible to free the ice blocks from the upper trays. Itâs a dopey system and takes up as much space as 3 or 4 old fashioned plastic icecube trays
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Hey, I have a tip for you. I used to have this problem, particularly with older trays. What I found helped was never filling the trays until I had all the ice (even tiny crystals) out of the trays. So I would run them under hot water, then fill with either cold or warm. The ice comes out much easier. Hope it helps.
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Our 10 year old Electrolux has 3 twist trays. They have not been a problem. Our secret is to not fill the trays exactly full. Tilting the far end of the trays at around 1 in 10 evens out the water in each cube. The excess flows off the end into the sink.
They do waste a little space to leave room to flip over and to hold the ice produced. Itâs less than a built in ice maker water chiller. The twist and drop ice tray unit can be removed from our other small fridge a Westinghouse, when the space is needed.
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Yah, been doing that. Its random, it seems, whether I get full cubes or broken ones. Meh.
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I have the same issue with a Samsung fridge/freezer. I feel your pain.I have found that the cubes dislodge more easily if I empty the trays after a short period of time (just after they have frozen). Leave them for a week and Iâm lucky to get half of them to drop.
The whole mechanism feels flimsy and likely to break. I am sure I will be using the tray method, suggested by others in this thread, before long.
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Looks like the same trays we have in our Westinghouse fridge. We also have the same trouble. The left hand one is ok inasmuch as if I twist the knob, the cubes drop out. However, the tray often then jams and wonât return because I have discovered there is something in the roof above the tray that catches it, which means I canât get the tray in or out without a fight. The right hand tray will never release the cubes, so I now take the whole thing out and free the cubes by twisting it very hard until the cubes release. Then I slide it back in, twist both knobs, and the ice falls out. Westinghouse shouldnât make it so hard. Otherwise, the rest of the fridge is great.
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Yeah, my fridge is a top mount Westinghouse 340L. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Wonât be going there again 
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