FirstBuild Opal Countertop Nugget Ice Maker

This review is being written after two years of owning the Opal Firstbuild Ice Maker. Two years of amazing ice. Why am I writing it now after such a long time? Because now the ice maker is sitting in a pile of rubbish to be thrown out.Firstly, this item does work as described. Plug it in, add water, get ice. It makes a lot of ice in short order so that was awesome. The book comes with a nice manual that details the lighting and what it means, as well as outlines a cleaning routine. I cannot overstate how important it is for you to go overboard cleaning the machine.The book says to clean every few months or so by filling the reservoir with 5 cups of vinegar, run the cleaning cycle and then rinse with fresh water. Or you can buy a cleaning kit from opal that has a cleaner and descaler solution. Not sure if the cleaning kit would have prevented our situation or not.Our situation, and why I rated the icemaker 3 out of 5 instead of full blown 5 like it deserves, is the cleaning. When the water is pulled from the reservoir to make ice, it is placed inside of a holding tank that spills into the actual reactor that makes the ice nuggets. That means there is a full two cups of water sitting in a small tank nearly all the time. Over time the ice water does cycle through the system making ice, melting, making ice... depending on how much you use the machine, the water may go thru once, it may cycle several times. That is up to you. Where the problem lies is, you have a nice warm machine inside. Most people place the Opal in the kitchen, like we did. In the kitchen you use flour, yeast, etc... combine this with normal airborne bacteria and such and you have a breeding ground for mold. Which is what happened to us. We religiously cleaned this machine per their schedule and instructions. Sometimes deep cleaning it with toothbrushes to get into crevices. Over time though we started noticing small black specks in the ice. We didn't think anything of it, and just increased our cleaning schedule. Going as far as doubling the cleaning cycle. Still, the black specks persisted. At this point, our machine was nearly the full two years old. So being out of warranty, I took the cover off the machine to see if I can spot the source of the black specks. What I found disgusted us to the point that we the machine away. Inside that small holding tank that I mentioned earlier was a 1/8" thick (about 2mm) layer of black mold. Sludge, slimy black mold. That mold had the opening where the water exited the tank and poured into the ice reactor about 30% blocked. The stainless steel plate and ice making holes where the water runs into also blackened with mold. Not to mention the descaler did NOTHING to descale the machine. Inside was covered with crystalline deposits. I did some looking online, and even though I could probably have replaced the water reservoir inside with a clean one, the ice making reactor was a total loss. It was claimed that you couldn't get it clean.With this thing being one of my wife's favorite items of all time, I decided I might as well research the issue and write OPAL to see what can be done. What I found was that the machine is virtually unrepairable so if anything goes wrong outside the one year warranty you are out of luck. I verified this by sending pics of the mold and growth inside to OPAL and asked what we can do about this to get the ice maker back running. I wasn't asking for a replacement, or freebies, because I knew it was out of warranty. I wanted to buy the parts I needed and get this back running. I was told, in a polite canned email response, "sorry for the issues you are facing but you are out of your warranty period and there is nothing we can do for you"Online there are literal forums about this mold issue. Your cleaning WILL NOT STOP IT. Opening the machine to do inspections to check for growth will void the warranty. Two years seems to be the magic number before the machine starts to show the specks and mold build up. Expect an amazing two years for the 600 dollars you spend on this.

I have long been a huge fan of “soft” or “crushed” ice and in my neck of the woods, without a Sonic anywhere close by, there are only a handful of places where you can even buy this kind of ice. Our local hospital has it available on most every floor, and a convenience store or two has it. My husband runs a large continuing care retirement community and they have installed a couple of machines in the last several years that make this kind of ice. I have, on many occasions said “One of these days, I will have a nugget ice machine in my home.” He, of course, knowing that the cost of installing special water lines and drains, as well as giving up enough cabinet space to install an industrial version of a nugget ice maker is beyond cost prohibitive for most homeowners, and he would simply shake his head at me as if to say “I don’t think so, dear!” Imagine my excitement when I came across an advertisement for this little beauty that’s requires none of the sacrifice or costly installation that an industrial machine demands. So, I ordered the ice maker in November, despite my husband’s skepticism about how the ice it produced would compare to that of industrial units. It arrived the next day (Thank you Amazon Prime trial membership). I immediately set it up, ran a cleaning cycle, started it up and had this beautiful stuff of my dreams coming out within 15 minutes. As of this date, I have made many batches of ice without a single glitch or even a hiccup. I cannot speak of anyone else’s experiences, but I can’t imagine anyone not loving this machine. Yes, it makes a slight noise that to me sounds like the fan on my microwave on the lowest setting; that is part of the refrigeration system required to do what it does. The only time I hear squeaking is when the unit is defrosting, which it does for about 10 minutes in the 3-4 hour period that I usually run it non-stop. If one is in the same room with the machine, you do hear these things, but I start it up and go about doing my business as the ice maker does its business so I hardly notice the noise. I make enough ice each time I fire it up to fill a 2-gallon zipper bag, and I keep it in the freezer. It is a little harder this way, if you take it out of the freezer and pop it right into your mouth, but once you pour liquid over it, it softens back up by soaking in the liquid so that when your drink is gone, you are left with wonderfully chewable ice flavored by whatever you were drinking from the glass. I do use spring water that I buy from the grocery store, as our water is from a well, and sometimes is not very pleasant tasting. Each gallon of water will just about make enough ice to fill my 2-gallon zipper bag. I have observed that different brands of water will produce very slightly different textures of ice; I believe this is due to the amount of oxygen in the type of water you choose. I have had absolutely NO issues with leaking from the unit. I will point out that the ice bin does have holes across the back of the “floor” of the bin that are designed to allow any water that melts from the ice to go back into the water reservoir below the bin and that water is then reused in the ice making process; if you pull the bin all the way out and sit it on the counter, a tiny bit of that melted water might run out of these holes and you might need to wipe it up from where the bin was sitting, but to call this “leaking” is beyond absurd. I cannot imagine at this point, how I would manage to live without this wonderful appliance. My husband and I both agree that it’s like it brings a little bit of extra joy into our life to have this ice available to us all the time. It was kinda funny, the other night hubby stopped at a drive-thru to pick up something for dinner and bought us each a drink and when I picked up my drink it didn’t have any ice in it. I asked if he ordered them without ice or if the person working just didn’t put much in and it all melted; he told me he got them without ice on purpose so we could use our “good ice” since it is much better and probably much more healthy than the restaurant’s ice machine anyway.I have no regrets about this purchase and don’t ever plan to be without this wonderful ice again in my lifetime. I now consider nugget ice to be one of my basic human necessities. Thank you First Build for an awesome product! Now, if only we could get this technology built into a refrigerator/freezer my life would be even more complete.

Real Sonic ice

I love pebble ice so much that I was willing to pay $500 to have a machine in my house and it broke within a few months of use. I tried to contact their customer service several times with little or no reply. I jumped through all the hoops they asked to verify the problem and still, months later, nothing has been done to resolve the issue. If yours breaks, don't expect any support or refund.When I turn on the machine, the water is pumped through the hose but no ice comes out. It eventually turns off. It is completely useless.