I have an automatic ice maker in my kitchen freezer. Also in the freezer is the usual stuff – meats, bread, bacon, sausage, leftovers, etc. Next to the ice bucket is a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda.
The ice has a strange taste and odor. To me, this taste and odor can even be detected in a glass of Coke. In plain water, it’s even more pronounced. I have tried changing the baking soda and replacing the ice bucket (which smelled bad, even after throughly washing it). Any ideas why the ice tastes bad and what I could do about it?
The water is ordinary tap water. The water comes from the hot water pipe under the kitchen sink. (I don’t know why it’s the hot side, that’s the way the house was when we bought it.) It runs through a copper pipe to a filter behind the fridge. The filter was new three years ago. The water then continues through the copper tube up to the inlet valve on the freezer itself. From there, it’s plastic or aluminum inside the freezer.
I don’t know about the replacement suggestions on your filter, but on the water filter I have I’m supposed to change it every three months. Your filter is three years old? That may account for some crappy tasting water.
Do you have your owner’s manual, or can you download it from the manufacturer’s website? How often do they recommend changing the filter? Three years sounds like a long time to me. Also, hot water often contains more dissolved impurities than cold, so that might affect your filter life.
I note your location is Central Texas - if you’re in Austin, there’s a known algae bloom in the water supply. This is probably what’s causing the bad taste. The City has said that it may take a few weeks to go away.
I will look into the filter aspect. The filter is a real pain in the #@$@# to change, so I’ve resisted the urge. Maybe now is the time. I can’t imagine why the water comes from the hot water pipe. I may look into getting a plumber to move it to the cold pipe. Maybe when I have him come over for some other thing, it’ll be a while you’re here sort of thing.
I’m actually about half way between Austin and Houston, so I don’t think the algy thing is a problem. Our drinking water is drawn from the Colorado, which is where Austin dumps its wastewater. A few days after Austin has a heavy rain, the trash floats through our little town.
How specific is the filter to the actual model of freezer? This filter doesn’t attach to the freezer in any way, it just gets put into the line and hangs there behind the freezer. My sister has a filter that she pulls out from the front of the fridge and replaces. She doesn’t have to move anything or unscrew or spill water or anything. I wish ours were so easy.
IMO, ice from a freezer always smells and tastes bad. We had a freezer with an icemaker and we were religious about changing the filter. The ice still had a bad taste.
We have an ice machine now and have a super filter on it. The ice is perfectly clear, odorless and tasteless.
My parents live in the hill country and their ice is bad, too. I genuinelly think it is ‘freezer smell’ because if you buy a bag of ice, it will start to go bad, too.
I’m on a private well, and the water wasn’t very good tasting, so I use one of the refrigerator pitchers with a carbon filter doodad, and an inline filter hoozis in the basement to feed the ice-o-mat. I think it cost me about $15 at Lowes.
You really don’t need to hire a plumber if you’re capable of using ordinary hand tools. A piercing access valve can be installed with a screwdriver and adjustable wrench, and moving the feed from the hot to the cold line, once you have the valve installed is also a single wrench deal. Get a screw-on cap for the unused port on the hot side, give the threads a wrap of teflon tape, and install the cap.
The bad odor and taste may not be caused by the water supply but by food inside your frig.
Where we lived in TX the water got too salty to drink. The only way to remove salt economically is to use a Reverse Osmosis system. I installed a small RO unit under the kitchen sink. The RO unit also had carbon and sediment filters. I installed a line to the frig for the ice-maker and drinking water. An RO unit makes very pure water. But at times we still had bad taste and odor in the ice. Soda in the frig helped but the main thing was to keep all strong smelling foods (onions, etc.) in sealed containers. Part of the problem is the design of the air flow inside the frig. On that frig I even installed a carbon filter inside the freezer to filter the air. I used a cook top vent filter… it worked but the filter would only last a few months.
We live in another state now. I have a small in line carbon filter on the water supply to the frig to remove any odor or taste in the water. The new frig has never had a problem with odor in the ice like our other frig.
I just wanted to post a quick reply. I finally got around to changing the in-line filter on my ice maker. It seems to have fixed the problem. I had a drink last night that did not have that funk to it. Even better, I got a new-fangled filter at Sears that will make changing the filter in the future a quick, tool-free operation. It just snaps out at each end, and I snap the new one in. Very easy. I still have to have a bucket to run water through the new filter for a bit, but other than that, it will be easy.
A few days after Austin has a heavy rain, the trash floats through our little town.