Kitchen Large Electric Appliances - Connect icemaker to hot water line?

Has anyone ever heard of hooking up an icemaker to the hot water line and the reason for doing it?

Thanks

davelew,

You can catagorize this idea as either an urban legend or an old wive's tale. (No disrespect to old wives intended. :D)

The reasons not to are; valves in the refrigerator are not rated for high temperature, water in a hot water tank tends to have an off taste due to sediment build-up, ice takes longer to make, introduces unnecessary cooling load in freezer compartment, carbon filters on the incoming water line will encourage mold growth...............................

Can't really think of any more right now but there likely are.

Have never heard of anyone doing it but have heard numerous arguments that hot water freezes quicker than cold water. Won't go there though. I would not do it for one simple reason. Water heaters have concentrated "things" like metals and in some cases bacteria. If you read cookbooks, you will notice they NEVER start with hot tap water. They always heat it. Gary Slusser our resident water specialist here at DIY told me all this

Ya, the hot water freezes faster thing is another legend that doesn't stand up.

In order to freeze water there are two types of heat to be removed, latent and sensible.
Sensible heat is the heat that is removed to lower it from its current temperature to 32 deg F.
Latent heat is the heat that must be removed to change it from water that is at 32 F to ice at 32 F.
When calculating the btu's required to lower the temp, you use the water's present temperature and subtract 32 to get the required temperature drop.
So, if the water is at a higher temperature, it will take more btu to lower the temperature which will also take longer.