Ice Maker Not Filling

[Darlene Bell]

I have a Samsung RF220NCTASR/AA. It has a bottom freezer with ice maker. No water dispenser. It suddenly stopped making ice. There's no water going into the ice tray. If I manually fill the tray it will freeze, cycle and dump as it should but the tray won't fill again. The fill valve works. When the ice maker cycles it calls the water up and I can catch it in a bucket when I detach the line. There's a heated tube (part DA97-00209T) that goes between the water line and the ice maker and I am guessing it has frozen and needs to be replaced. I can't find anything about how to remove and replace it. In looking at photos of the part it seems to plug directly into the ice maker for power but has no other electrical connection going out. There must be an electrical connection from the ice maker to the fill valve so I'm confused. I can't find any good diagrams of this system or directions or videos of how to replace this. Any help out there?

[gfretwell]

Sometimes they just ice up and it is usually caused by a slow leak in the valve. I would use a hair dryer to free it up and see if it is working again. Then disconnect the water line again and be sure it turns on and off cleanly with no slow drips. Mine was only icing up about once a week but I did catch the valve not completely closing once and I threw another one at it. That fixed the problem.

[Dean Hoffman]

[trader_4]

Could also check the resistance of this heater tube, see if it's some reasonable value. If it's 20W, that would be about 700 ohms. Testing for voltage at the heater could be tricky, it may only cycle on periodically. I guess they could even just cycle it on for

5 minutes before each ice cycle.

[Darlene Bell]

There is only a slight amount of moisture where the line enters the refrigerator. This is where the heated filler tube is so I assume the moisture is from the tube freezing, which would mean the heated piece isn't heating as it should.

[Darlene Bell]

I'm not sure how I would test voltage. It plugs into the ice maker. When I unplug it from the ice maker I assume it won't have power, but then I don't know how the signal gets from the ice maker to the fill valve since this piece is between them with no connection going out from the heated tube (I think). I am trying to understand the electrical connections but haven't found anything helpful there either. Resistance I can check.

[gfretwell]

I am not sure there is a heater tube in a Whirlpool/Kenmore/Amana/Roper. I think they just depend on a rush of room temperature water to heat the tube. That is why a slow drip will freeze.

[Darlene Bell]

I'm replying to my own question, just in case it might help someone. I finally found a good clear photo of the heated tube that made it pretty clear how it had to be removed and I've made the repair. The heated fill tube plugs in right next to the ice maker, so here's what I did. I removed the ice maker (two screws and then pull it forward) but didn't have to unplug it. The fill tube can be clearly seen where it enters above the ice maker. It plugs in right next to the ice maker plug. When I unplugged the fill tube the control panel for the refrigerator went out, but it did not effect the refrigerator and freezer staying cold. Once the fill tube is unplugged it is supposed to be easy to pull it out from the back of the refrigerator (It's under a small plastic panel -- the water line goes into it), but when it's frozen like mine was it won't budge. I unplugged the refrigerator for 2 hours and then was able to pull it out with a lot of twisting and tugging. The new piece slipped easily into the hole. I plugged it in to the top of the freezer (inside), replaced the ice maker, freezer drawers, and the freezer door, reattached the water line, and the next morning my ice maker was making ice again!

[trader_4]

Thanks for letting us know.

[DerbyDad03]

I'm glad you were able to fix it, and hopefully it will stay fixed, but I just want to toss something out:

My ice maker fill tube kept re-freezing every few days. The permanent fix was to shut off and open the refrigerator and freezer for 24 hours, which allowed for any ice in the internal air passages to melt.

If ice builds up in the internal air passages, it blocks air flow and all sorts of things can happen. Frozen ice maker tubes, inconsistent temperatures in both the refrigerator and freezer compartment and overall inefficiency issues.

If you have spare cooling/freezing capabilities - my garage and deck would work fine for me right now ;-) - you might want to consider performing a complete thaw. Other than a little extra work, it can't hurt.