Feed Line for Ice Maker

Water that sets in a hot water tank deoxygenates so that the ice cubes come out clear while ice cubes that come off a cold water supply have many bubbles that make the ice cube cloudy.

I don't know if that's true or not....so I guess I'll have to do a few experiments to find out.

Okay...............I'll ask.

Why in the world would the clarity of an ice cube matter?

My drinks don't seem to care at all. In fact I think I would prefer the bubble filled cubes, so as to dilute my drink less.

What do I know? I've got a beautiful fridge, and my poor wife has been waiting 8 years for me to hook up the ice maker.

After the third or fourth drink you wouldn't know if your cubes were frozen dog pee.

There was a time when I drank some ice water, and if the ice was made from cold faucet water, it had white flecks in it. I won't say what city I live in _mesa but those flecks weren't air. Some of the white devils would even accumulate in the bottom of the glass as the ice melted. Sorta like one of those snow globe toys that you shake.

Well, it was enough to put me off water for the rest on my life, up to now at least.

Here's to ya.

Also, I still have your address. Think I'll send Tara a note and let her know that while you think you have a "beautiful fridge", you only think you have a "poor wife".

"I've got a beautiful fridge, and my poor wife"

The downstairs remodel starts next week.....................by me, myself and I. Upstairs is done except bathroom.

Ice will be coming soon!

Tara's pretty patient. The thing is, that as long as our basic needs are met, in my book we're okay. I've never understood people borrowing money just to make things prettier. I hate debt.

Now is the time. No debt required. It's a lot more satisfying. More people should try it.

Most people don't know how to do things like this. If you do it yourself, you know the quality that goes into it. And how much work it really is.

We were dirt poor when I grew up on the farm. If we didn't do it it didn't get done. My brother virtually built his own two story house, except for cabinets/flooring/roof and it looks great. Not your typical Arkansas trailer trash house. (Except for that Suburban the dogs live in) This guy even built a slump block dog house with a window air conditioner in it for one of his sickly dogs.

Women are from Venus; men are from Mars.

(from the Latin: De gustibus non est disputandum.)

(Or glacial ice cubes, which supposedly sink, being classified as metamorphic rocks.)

Loosely translated ( I have forgotten 99% of my Latin!)

"The dispute is not about the taste"

For what its worth, so does mine.

If heated water from a constant pressure tank, as in most domestic HWTs, is drained from a faucet into a glass it may appear cloudy. The cloudiness will clear fairly quickly when left to stand for a few seconds. The cloudiness comes from the gases trapped at pressure that are released from solution when at atmospheric pressure. That may help to explain why you would think hot water is less clear than cold. True but only briefly.

If you have two water sources, one hot and one cold, and allow both of these waters to reach the same ambient temperature then things will be different in the two water supplies. Not only will the previously hot water be clearer (it lost its dissolved gases) but it will also freeze slightly faster than the cold water. We must agree that the two water lines are at the same temperature prior to the start of freezing. Strange as it seems but true the hot water will freeze quicker. For an explanation try here. I enjoy my Calvados with any type of ice cube but some may be fussier. Making lots of ice cubes could be more important for energy (ignoring the costs of heating the water) or as stated by others for clarity.

The holy water is the clearest of all, right?

Water has holes?

Not only clear and holy but pure. I think that gets rid of the E.coli.

Hot water has less dissolved oxygen in it therefore the ice cubes are clearer and not with the "white core" of small bubbles that cold water ice cubes have.

You could do extensive laboratory research to prove or disprove this. I'm sure there are many who would dispute it for whatever reason they might have. I learned it to be fact when I was bar-tending in a gin mill during college. Owner insisted that cost of using hot water was minimal compared to the cost of customer service.

I ran the test in my refrig and yes the hot water cubes are much clearer and more suitable for a drink than the cold water ones, at least for the first 6 drinks. After that who cares!

Good Luck, Old Salt

Cold or hot?

Depends on the carver and what the bride said she wanted.

I make curling ice as a part-time job. It is a lot more detailed than what you'd expect. The main reason for tapping off the hot water line as someone has already said is that the hot water (which will not be actually hot when it arrives at your ice machine) will contain less dissolved gasses that would make your ice look cloudy. You will get a clearer and better looking ice cube.

I wonder a little about the hygiene side.....Legionaire's disease for example. Wasn't that something to do with cold water storage, then warming it up......but I do believe you have to breath in the water spray.......not drink it......

Just a thought.....

hot water has less chlorine and fluorine (if your water provider doses the water)

Many houses, such as mine, have the water entering the house near the kitchen. The water softener is in the middle of the house near the furnace and hot water heater. There is no cold water tap running back to the kitchen. By tapping off the hot water line you will also be sure it is after any house water softener or water filter units. A second reason is that there is always a cutoff valve at the hot water heater, that is easy to find. The highest probability is that it was the most convenient pipe to tap off from.

"The highest probability is that it was the most convenient pipe to tap off from."

After all that I have seen in the construction trades, I will bet dollars to doughnuts, that this was the true reason.

In UK it's advised to take drinking water directly from the main, not from a tap (cold or hot) fed from a header tank, due to possibility of contamination. Might be less of an issue if it's a combi boiler, or a mains-pressure hot water cylinder (no header tank).

But as other posters have said, what's the problem with air bubbles in ice cubes?

Here, someone take on make crystal clear ice they boiled the water which removes the dissolved air. There additional reference to minerals removal is wrong I think. Boiling water the minerals stick to the pot or heating element.

Just a thought, but would hooking up the small diameter plastic ice-maker service line to the hot water line prevent it from freezing during the winter months?

To me that would make sense if the line is located down in an uninsulated (or poorly insulated) basement or crawl space.

Just throwing in my 2 Cents worth with a different approach...

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how long the line is, water usage in the ice maker, temperate in crawl space, air flow over the line. The plastic line may not split if frozen unlike copper or hard plastic.

Only if there is sufficient use of the hot water fed ice maker to keep the tubing warm enough to prevent freezing. If there is little or no flow the water in the tubing falls to the ambient temperature. If this is below the freezing point the ice maker doesn't work because the tubing is blocked with ice.

This is a problem many people incur when they have a 2nd refrigerators in their garage in cold winter areas. Using the ice maker in the winter becomes a problem. A 2nd problem with the garage unit is that when the ambient air is cold enough the "cooler" section doesn't run as often. This prevents the freezer section from getting adequate cooling so it's temperature will rise, sometimes up to the ambient temperature.

Solution is to shut off and drain the garage ice maker during the winter and make ice in the indoor refrig. Bag it and store it in the garage refrig.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Wow...I didn't think a simple repost of something I found in less than a minute would bring about such a discussion.

or non-discussing (posting) readers

The clarity of the ice cubes depends on the water system where you live. I have been in places with cloudy ice cubes and places with clear ice cubes. I have also seen it be seasonal

lets be honest..who really looks at their ice cubes in JD & coke?

the line that feeds water into the refrigerator's ice maker is tapped into a hot water line. Is there a reason for this?

Lazy or incompetent plumber? I have heard of toilets plumbed with hot water. Most likely it required a shorter line with less holes drilled through studs.

I'm inclined to think there's a reason, there's no difference in the length of tubing, or labor involved in my installation.

It keeps the tank from sweating from the cold water refilling it after flushing. Though with the low flow small tank design it's less of a problem now. Old toilets used 5 or more gallons of water per flush. New ones 1.5 gallons or less.

Heat disassociates chlorine from the water so it helps in taste.