--- title: "KitchenAid Ice Maker Not Working: Which of the Two Machines Is Yours" description: "A KitchenAid ice maker not working is two different repairs — the refrigerator module or the undercounter machine. Work outward from water arriving." url: "https://kitchenaidmiami.support/blog/kitchenaid-ice-maker-not-making-ice/" date_modified: "2026-08-23" Category: "Common Problems" --- # KitchenAid Ice Maker Not Working: Which of the Two Machines Is Yours ## Before anything else: a KitchenAid ice maker not working is two different repairs Two completely different appliances answer to this phrase, and almost every general article on the subject treats them as one thing. They are not. **The refrigerator ice maker** is a module bolted into the freezer compartment or into the door of a French-door or side-by-side cabinet. It has one water line running to it, no drain, no compressor of its own, and no independent cooling. It is a small machine living inside a cold box that somebody else is cooling. **The undercounter ice maker** is a whole appliance. Fifteen or eighteen inches wide, its own compressor, its own water supply, **its own drain**, and its own cleaning cycle. It does nothing but make ice, and in this climate it earns its keep and asks for attention in return. Same words, different appliance, different visit — and different checks, which is what the rest of this page is about. Decide which one you have and read the section that applies. ## The refrigerator ice maker: work outward from water arriving Most of these stop because water is not reaching the module, not because the module has failed. Take them in this order, because the order is roughly cheapest and most likely first. ### The shut-off arm or the switch The metal wire arm that rides on top of the ice, or on newer cabinets a switch on the panel or on the module itself. When the arm is lifted or the switch is off, the ice maker is doing exactly what it was told. It gets moved by a bag of frozen food, by somebody reaching past it, and by whoever last emptied the bin. It costs nothing to look at and it is the single most common reason a working ice maker is not working. ### The filter, and how old it is **The filter light is a counter, not a sensor.** It tells you how much water has gone through, not what condition the cartridge is in — and a cartridge left in long past its count will restrict the flow enough to starve the ice maker while the dispenser still appears to work. A note on buying one: the maker sells these as **KAD1 through KAD6**, and the identical cartridges are sold as **everydrop EDR1 through EDR6**. Same part, two names, which is exactly why the aisle is confusing. The number is on the old cartridge. They are not interchangeable across numbers. After fitting a new one, purge the line by running several gallons through the dispenser. **A new filter puts air into the line**, and air is why so many people report that changing the filter stopped the ice maker rather than helping it. ### The fill tube, frozen The small tube that delivers the shot of water into the mold. If the water arrives as a dribble instead of a shot — low pressure, a partly closed valve, a tired inlet valve — some of it freezes in the tube, and the next fill has nowhere to go. What you see is an ice maker that has stopped. What is actually happening is a water-supply problem that has hidden itself behind a plug of ice. Clearing the plug without fixing the reason simply buys a few days. ### The inlet valve and the supply The valve at the back of the cabinet, and the shut-off under the sink or behind the refrigerator that somebody may have closed during other work. A valve that is opening weakly produces exactly the dribble described above. ### The freezer temperature itself An ice maker will not harvest if the compartment is not cold enough. If the freezer has been struggling, the ice is a symptom rather than the problem, and fixing the cabinet fixes the ice. **Only after all of that** does the module itself come into question — the ejector, the mold heater, the thermostat, or the optics that tell the machine the bin is full when it is not. ## The undercounter machine: water in, water out, and scale Everything above about water arriving applies here too. Three things are additionally true, and they account for most of what we are called out to. ### The drain The part people forget exists. These machines drain, and **a slow or blocked drain will stop a perfect machine cold.** A gravity drain installed with too little fall never really worked in the first place — worth knowing, because "it has never been right" and "it stopped last week" are two different investigations. Some of these run to a pump instead, and a pump that has failed is its own repair. ### The cleaning cycle, and what happens after it **"It will not start again after I cleaned it"** is one of the most common calls we take about these, and it is usually not a failure. The cleaning cycle has to run all the way through and be acknowledged, the drain has to be clear, and on most of these machines the power has to be cycled before it goes back to making ice. If it ran a cleaning cycle and then sat, walk that sequence before calling anybody. ### Scale Hard water leaves scale on the evaporator plate and through the water path, and it shows up as a warning long before it shows up as a stoppage: **cubes going small, cloudy or hollow.** Clear ice is made by freezing slowly in layers so air and minerals are pushed out. When cubes turn cloudy, that process is being cut short — and cloudy ice usually appears months before a machine stops. Act on it then and it is maintenance. Both Miami-Dade and Broward soften their water at the treatment plant, because groundwater from the Biscayne Aquifer is hard. It is still worth knowing your own utility's number: the maker's own manual recommends a softener at **15 grains or more** and treats 7 to 12 grains as medium to hard. ## Why South Florida is hard on both of these Warm ambient air, hard water, and near-constant demand. An ice maker in a Miami kitchen runs closer to its limit for more of the year than the same machine anywhere north, and two things suffer for it: the condenser it breathes through, and the water path it scales up. Both of those are maintenance rather than repair, right up until they are not. Keep the condenser area clear, run the cleaning cycle on schedule, and change the filter on its count rather than on how the water tastes. **Have ready when you call:** the model number, whether it is undercounter or inside a refrigerator, whether it drains to a pipe or to a pump, and when it last had a cleaning cycle. Independent KitchenAid service across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. We are not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by any manufacturer. --- **[Read full article: KitchenAid Ice Maker Not Working: Which of the Two Machines Is Yours](https://kitchenaidmiami.support/blog/kitchenaid-ice-maker-not-making-ice/)**