Here in Cancun, we do not enjoy the luxury of purified drinking water from the taps in our homes. We all buy bottles of purified water and either lug it home or have it delivered on a regular basis. Purified ice is another whole thing. Ice makers are available in refrigerator/freezers sold here, however, they require tapping into the household water supply as a source of pressurized water to make the ice.

This presents two problems:

1: Many homes here do not have sufficient household water pressure to properly supply an ice maker.

2:  It is not wise to use ice made from un-purified tap water in your drinks.

Most of us buy ice by the bag, at a local store like Oxxo. This time of year that bag of ice is  usually partially melted. We would bring it home and dump the wet cubes into our freezer. In a couple of hours we would have a solid brick when the wet ice would re-freeze. Every time we wanted ice we would have to chop away at it with an ice pick to get pieces small enough to fit in a drinking glass. This was a pain in the ass that I put up with for a year and a half. It was time to make this inconvenience  go away. The question was how to get the bottled purified water at sufficient pressure to the the connection on the back of our freezer, in order to supply the ice maker.

This is our “homemade“solution to the problem. The system is located in our pantry which is on the other side of the wall from where our refrigerator is located. This system is completely automatic and all we have to do is change the water bottle when it’s empty.  The pump is from an recreational vehicle and has a pressure sensing head built into it. When the ice maker valve opens to demand water there is a drop in pressure which starts the pump in order for it to restore the pressure to a set limit.

The pressure accumulator prevents rapid cycling of the pump by storing a reservoir of pressurized water for the ice maker when a demand is made. That way the pump only runs for about 2-3 seconds to replenish the system.

I cut off the open/ close lever to attach the hose.

The three-way hose coupler. One comes from the pump outlet, one goes to the accumulator, and the small white tube  goes to the freezer ice maker.

Closeup of the Shurflo motor spec plate:

PVC pipe and cap make up the accumulator with a threaded adapter on the bottom for the hose fitting:

The accumulator and threaded adaptor hose fitting connection:

Ice maker inside the freezer crankin’ out large frozen ice cubes and dumping them into the ice bin……………. SUCCESS !!!

View of the ice maker in the freezer

Plenty of ice cubes to keep our drinks cold everyday…………….and made from purified water!

Ice made with purified water in freezer bin

SORRY OXXO, NO MORE OF YOUR HALF MELTED BAGS OF ICE FOR US !!! LOL