hOmeLabs Freestanding Commercial Ice Maker Machine - Makes 143 Pounds Ice in 24 hrs with 29 Pounds Storage Capacity - Ideal for Restaurants Bars, Homes and Offices - Includes Scoop and Connection Hose

I run a medium sized landscaping business here in Florida. Having ice for our coolers every day is a must. My large Manitowac ice machine decided to take a dump, leaving us to purchase ice every day from a store. After a few days of spending $15 on ice, we had a decision to make.Instead of spending $3000 to buy another large commercial ice machine, we opted to buy this one. Here’s our Takeaway on it :It’s small. The footprint is small enough to fit in my messy garage and not take up any space. I spliced off the water line from my water softener and ran the drain line out my garage. I had a small piece of quarter inch PVC left over from a job, which I ran beside the collapsible drain line to make sure that the garage door does not crimp it when going down. Works like a charm. See pictureThis thing turns out a good amount of ice. Here is what we do with it. I ran it over the weekend and it made about 200 pounds of ice into days. Enough to fill a 65 quart yeti type root molded cooler, as well as having the been filled on the machine itself. I keep the Roto molded cooler near the ice machine, and when it fills up I just transfer the ice over to the cooler. The cooler holds the ice pretty well. I am running the machine on a setting of +3 minutes to make a thicker ice cube.Keep in mind that the storage compartment on the ice machine itself is not refrigerated, so the ice melts throughout the course of the day. When I get home from work I empty the machine into the cooler, and by the time I wake up in the morning the ice machine is full again. I just repeat this cycle throughout the course of the weekFor $500, this little machine is a workhorse. I did have a problem with it when it was delivered, but after calling the customer service number the problem was quickly resolved. The customer service agents do not speak very good English, but they were able to resolve my problem fairly painlesslyFor $500, this little machine is a workhorse. I did have a problem with it when it was delivered, but after calling the customer service number the problem was quickly resolved. The customer service agents do not speak very good English, but they were able to resolve my problem fairly painlessly.I would definitely recommend this machine if you are an avid outdoorsman. It will make enough ice to fill a large cooler in just about 24h. Well worth the $$$

So I needed more than the ice maker from my home freezer and the counter top was not enough either. Which led me to looking for a commercial ice maker. I wanted about something about 30 lbs of storage to fill my ice coolers for active household with kids. The ones I really wanted were >$1500 (Manitowoc or Hoshizaki or Scotsman) though these are overkill for the home. Anything between $500-$1500 in the commercial grade seemed low quality and not worth the money, I'd rather go with the premiums and get some better return if reselling.This Homelabs machine is perfect and the value is great. LIke other reviewers stated, the packaging is good and I saw that my Fedex driver had not kept the box upright so I waited the 24 hours before opening up the box as it also states on the packaging. Installing was under 1 hour though I had already installed a "T-adapter" prior to delivery. I have a sink in my garage and I placed the ice maker on the countertop so I can run the drain hose into the sink. I've looked into pond pumps to see if I can drain elsewhere but that's another project.The machine does crank out ice and it does stop when it is full. The ice doesn't break apart as many users have stated but that is also not much of an inconvenience for me.Take advantage of their support windows on their website. The instructions are not detailed so I had to research some items such as the drain pipe for the water tank (which wasn't diagrammed in the pdf or booklet) and they tell you how to clean the ice maker but they don't suggest any products. So I had to research/google the best methods to keep it clean (I purchased ice maker cleaner and descaler) because I'm a bit freaked out about any bacteria forming. I've also read that vinegar and some lemon would do the trick.Otherwise, this is great value. I also bought an inline filter from PureWater which was also easy to install but this filter only seems to be charcoal filter. It doesn't purify the water as much as I wanted to so I might look into a reverse osmosis system so I can truly get unclouded ice though the filter and machine does a better job of removing the clouds versus the home fridge