Common fault
Why has my ice maker stopped making ice?
Short answer
Judge it by the last tray it managed to make.
Why we start there
Cubes that came out small, hollow or dished in the top mean the mold never received a full charge of water, and that is a supply fault: the filter, the pressure reaching the valve, or a fill tube half closed with ice. Nothing at all, inside a compartment that is still genuinely cold, is the harvest side instead, which puts it on the module, its thermostat or its motor. The two need opposite repairs, and bolting a module onto a starved line gets you an identical tray of hollow cubes and a bill. In Poway there is a third question that catches people out, which is whether the machine is indoors or out, because an outdoor unit in summer can be perfectly healthy and still fall behind.
What happens next
Long supply runs are normal on these lots and they change what the machine is working with. Water headed for an island machine or an outdoor kitchen travels a long way from the shutoff, often through a slab or an unconditioned space, and by July it arrives at the valve considerably warmer than it did in winter. Warmer inlet water means a longer freeze cycle, fewer harvests per day, and a bin that never quite fills, and nothing at all is broken. Pressure drops over distance too, so a valve that is entirely adequate on a short kitchen line can be marginal at the far end of a long small-diameter run, which shows up as a mold that fills a little short every single cycle.
Outdoor and undercounter machines add a heat problem to the water problem. The condenser is down at ankle height in a masonry or cabinet surround with no cross ventilation, it pulls in the fine grit that blows around out here all summer, and the surround itself has been storing afternoon sun for hours and is still giving it back at nine at night. Production halving in July with no component failure at all is an ordinary outcome of that, and it happens on precisely the weekend a full house needs ice. The airflow path gets cleared and the machine gets time to recover before anybody spends money, since from outside the door a fouled condenser and an underfed water line produce the same disappointing bin.
If that matches what yours is doing, say so when you call — it decides which parts come on the van.
Rattle behind the lower grille on the undercounter drawers. Came out the next morning, emptied the whole cavity, and there was a nest and chewed insulation in there off the shop end of the property. Fast, tidy, explained what he was doing.
Cubes had been coming out small and dished in the top for weeks and I assumed the ice maker was finished. He put a gauge on the inlet valve instead of guessing, asked about our well and the softener, and it turned out the mold was never filling all the way.
Roasts wanted an extra half hour and the browning had gone uneven, so I thought the Wolf was on its way out. He left a probe sitting at rack level, showed me how far under it was actually running, and changed the sensor. First person to ask whether we were on propane.
Appliance down in Poway?
Tell us the brand and what it is doing — we can usually name the likely repair before we arrive.