Whirlpool ice maker has stopped making ice

Filter, arm, and the temperature

Three things in order. Check the filter: if it is overdue, or was changed recently and the light is still on, remember that Whirlpool's status light does not reset itself — it has to be reset by hand and a full filter housing is a genuine cause of low production. Check the shut-off arm or the on-off switch, which gets knocked to the off position when somebody reaches past it. Then check the freezer temperature: an ice maker will not cycle properly in a compartment that is not cold enough, so a slow ice maker can be the first sign of a freezer problem rather than an ice problem.

What it usually means, by the kind of machine

Whirlpool sells one appliance in several forms — a top-loader with an agitator and one without, a front-loader, a stacked pair, a laundry tower and an all-in-one; a vented dryer, a ventless one and a heat pump — and the same behavior points at different things on each of them. A top-load washer has no drain pump filter to open and a front-loader does, which is the whole first hour of the same complaint on two machines.

• French door — The ice maker sits in the fresh food door on many of these, which puts a water line through the hinge. A line that has been kinked during a move is a common finding.
• Side-by-side — Ice maker in the freezer compartment feeding a door dispenser. Cubes fused into a solid block in the bin usually means slow production rather than a broken maker.
• Freestanding ice maker — A separate appliance with its own service and cleaning lights. Whirlpool publishes pages for both, and in this climate the cleaning interval matters more than the manual suggests.

The filter light that does not reset itself

Whirlpool publishes this and it catches people constantly: the water filter status light on these refrigerators does not clear when a new filter goes in. It is a counter, and it has to be reset by hand. So a household that has changed the filter twice can be looking at a light that has been on for a year, assuming the machine is complaining about something else. Resetting it costs nothing and removes one item from the list before anybody looks inside.

What we do differently on a coast

Ice production is the first thing to suffer when a condenser is struggling, which makes a slow ice maker a useful early warning in a climate this hard on coils. On a coastal property we will look at the condenser and the ambient conditions as part of an ice call rather than treating the ice maker in isolation, because the appliance that makes less ice in July is often the one that stops cooling properly in August.