The customer is going to be much happier now that they have some ice. This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. Today, we're working on a host is off the ice machine and this is an interesting problem. So when i got here, the customer said the machine wasn't working, they have really no ice until i got it running when i got here, though, that switch was off, that's the power switch now you know it would have been just as easy to say.

Hey you guys have to switch off, but you know i started asking them questions and confirm that it's been an issue for the last couple days and they have heard it running, but just they have seen ice and they're just very little ice, very small. You know just very little ice, so not necessarily small cubes, just low production. So i'm racking my brain here because when i walked up it wasn't off on a safety limit. If it was off on a safety limit, then that would indicate things but whatever's happening.

The board isn't catching it and it's not locking itself out, because if there's long freeze long harvest it locks itself out and gives you an audible beep until you reset it. So i'm watching the machine operate and i decided to go and put some service gauges on it, and this is about where i found it. But when i put the gauges on there, i'm a little concerned about that head pressure because it's still cool outside. I want to say it's like 75 degrees or something like that.

I just wouldn't expect to see higher than 300 head pressure at the moment now later in the day, yeah, but not right now, so that took me up onto the roof and i'm going to take you guys up there and show you what i found. Okay, we have a common rack here, so this houses, all the compressors for all the refrigeration equipment and they're. Also using this condenser for the ice machine which you can do osuzaki is very open to people using their own condensers. But i noticed something that two of the condenser fan motors aren't running.

So, okay, what's going on with that, you know. You've got two thermostats right here and both of these thermostats have different temperatures at which it turns on condenser fan motors, okay kind of like fan, cycling, okay, it is really, and what it's doing is it's using temperature instead of pressure, because it's a common rack. So if you notice the way they have it set up, one thermostat turns on condenser fan motors at 80 degrees. One thermostat turns on condenser fan motors at 100 degrees.

It's 94 degrees here right now. I don't know if you heard it when i hit it. Okay, so that one's ranging at 80 degrees - let's see where this one's ranging this one's, turning on and off at 50 degrees. So we have a bad thermostat right here and then this right here is working, but it's a little messed up too notice that it's turning on and off at 80, when we're sensing 95 degrees right now.

So we've got mechanical bulbs sitting right here, so we're going to go ahead and replace these thermostats. All the connection familiars are running now, so we're going to replace these thermostats and we're going to put in something different, probably i'm probably going to go with digital and i'll mount the sensing bulbs through the bottom of the cabinet or something down here that way they Can actually sense outdoor ambient? I don't know that this is the only problem. Okay, but i'm trying to investigate again the machine once i turn that switch on it made a batch of ice in like 25 minutes, so it was cool. I didn't put my gauges on it, then.

Okay, after the first batch, i decided hey, i'm gon na put my service gauges on here, because i couldn't see what was wrong. Then i noticed hey that pressure is just a little bit higher than what i'd expected to be, and i come up here and find the condenser familiar issue. So i don't know that this is the only issue, but i know that this is one thing what's interesting, though, is they weren't complaining about their walk-in freezer and walk-in coolers and all their refrigeration equipment, because that is also on the same common rack and if the Condenser families aren't running, i would expect those things would be going off on high head pressure also, so they may not have just seen that issue. I don't know interesting huh all right.

I went ahead and powered it down so that way we can do the full repair uh. My unit disconnects right here, so i've already confirmed we're dead. Um i've been picking up parts and stuff the ice machines made ice like two times since i've been gone. So i'm pretty confident this is the issue with the ice machine, so um i'm gon na go ahead and go back with some digital controls, so we're gon na redo, some stuff move some stuff all right, i'm going back in with some pen, a421 or johnson controls.

Um, i'm mainly using this control because of the size it's a rather small control. I can mount them right here. Uh, the ronco controls take up a little more space. I'd rather use the digital, because you can actually, you know not have to guesstimate on the accuracy.

Um - and you can actually do offsets in these things too, if i remember right, but uh yeah, so we're going to go back in there and then we'll run the sensors down here and you know have them out in the elements that way we can get an Accurate outdoor air temperature, all right, we are wired in um, i made a few changes: uh. The old controls right here file those in their respective places, so the old system - and you know so i may get some pushback on this, but i made some improvements for a logical reason. The old temperature controllers were controlled by this toggle switch okay. This is the breaker for the condenser fan motors.

The toggle switch runs all the way over and gets power from these fuses right here or it's fused by those funky looking fuses. Okay, those aren't something i stock very commonly um. Actually, i don't stock them. I would have to probably go to an electrical supply house to get that style, but anyways uh.

You can see the red wires coming over here, going to that toggle switch, i'm actually going to remove them, but i wanted you guys to see. I took the toggle switch out of play and actually powered each temperature controller from this circuit breaker. Now i realize i'm adding load to the circuit breaker. Each one of these controls is not even probably going to run an amp okay, so i'm going to double check.

It to make sure, but the reason why i did that is because, if something fails and this control shorts, i want this breaker to trip and i don't want to blow those giant fuses. Okay, plus, these are big fuses and it's going to take a lot more of a short for those things to blow uh. You know bigger event, basically so by putting it on this breaker that was already existing and removing this toggle switch out of the picture. I don't even understand why this toggle switch was here, because all that the toggle switch did was disconnect control voltage to the contactors and the temp controls.

Okay. Now these new temp controls they're digital, so i had to run a common, so we're powering off of line. One and line three of the breaker running through the coils and everything uh the sensors are mounted right here. Okay, i tried to do them individually, so one person can change the sensors individually and they're coming down here going right to there - and i have a connector right here, so we should be good, um yeah, i'm going to power this guy up now before i power It up i'm going to turn everything off in the rack, because i don't want anything to turn on that on and uh i'm gon na remove that toggle switch out of the picture really quick and then once i get that out of the picture, then we'll power, The thing back up all right, everything is powered off.

We're gon na go ahead and power this guy on uh. This one has a switch holder thing on the outside, so you're gon na have to use channel locks to get it to turn on. For the time being, okay, we're powered on and then once we turn this breaker on. We should power on our uh temperature controllers and hope nothing blows up.

Okay, we're powered on now, so only one condenser fan motor is running at the moment. Okay, we're going to have to do some programming because we're going to take out the short cycle delay we're reading pretty accurate. My thermometer says 98 degrees. There says 95, so pretty accurate um.

So i got to do some programming now, but nothing blew up. So that's a plus all right we are operating. So what we have here is a thermostat. This one right here is reading 95 degrees they're both reading 95., i'm actually sensing 97., i'm good with that.

It's close enough! I'm not don't need to be crazy. With these things um, these are really easy in that uh. You basically tell it when to turn off the condenser fan motors and when to turn on so i have a 5 degree differential so on at 90 off at 85 and on this one off at 80. On at 85, okay, the other thing i did was the sf.

That's in case the sensor fails it'll turn the condenser fan motors on. I do like that about these pin controls or johnson a421s is you can set that up? So i have it set up to if the sensor fails. It automatically turns on the condenser fan motors and i think that's a really good thing that they do the next thing uh was, i turned off the anti-short cycle delay, so there's no delay so basically five degree differential turns on the condenser fan motors everything's wired in Nice and clean disconnected all the other wires we're not over amping whatsoever, seven amps, it's a 20 amp breaker. So adding these, i think i checked it.

I think it's like half an amp for each one of those controls or something so no problems whatsoever with that. So i think we're good we're gon na put this thing back together and then go downstairs and check on the ice machine again, even when it's damn near 100 degrees outside on startup. This machine isn't pushing 300 see. That's why i was.

I was a little bit taken back when i first started it earlier um, but the machine's running. Now, i'm just timing. The cycle gon na watch it make another batch of ice. It's made quite a few batches down in there.

While i was uh going to get the parts and everything so i'm pretty confident we're gon na be good but, like i said, i'm going to watch one more batch and she is harvesting now just started. Getting a nice amount of ice out of this thing and the customer's going to be happy, so i'm just going to tell them to keep an eye on it. Understanding the sequence of operation is really important, also giving the customer a disclaimer that hey you know. This is the only things i could find at this time.

You're gon na have to keep an eye on it. There may be other things going on who knows? Okay, when i walked up that morning, there was a cook, you know scrubbing down the machine and he had that power switch off and i walked up after he was done. I flipped the power switch and it made a batch of ice and i'm like hey. What's going on here, okay, um, so my instinct, you know right when it happened.

It was like hey, he just left the switch off or something like that. Okay, but no you know i had to look past that so i went and started talking to the managers. Was anybody here yesterday? Did they see you know? Did they hear the machine running questions like that is what i asked him and and the one that i spoke to she said yeah she goes. I could hear it running, but it just wasn't doing anything like she goes.

There would just never be any ice now. Another thing, too, when customers complain that their machines are completely out of ice, especially when they have two machines. It doesn't necessarily mean that both machines are down oftentimes. What can happen, especially on hosh's arch ice machines, because they have a long freeze cycle? Okay, so in the middle of the summer, when it's 110 degrees outside a hoshizaki ice machine can take up to 45 minutes to harvest a single batch of ice.

Typically, on the smaller machines, the medium size, like the 1 600 pound machines, you're only going to get like 28 pounds of ice out of each batch. Okay and if they're super busy and coming over and filling up all their ice baths, they can burn through that and they wouldn't even know that they had one machine working. So that's a common complaint that i get both my ice machines are down. I have no ice and then you get there and it's like no, you are just down one machine, the other one just can't keep up.

Okay. So that's something to remember, but you know just being able to go through everything and walk through the manager asking them questions like hey. Did you hear a noise coming out of the machine? Yes, i did. Did you see water coming out of the drain pipe uh? No, i don't think so.

Was there water pouring in the bin? No because i was trying to investigate everything. Okay, thinking of the the common problems that hoshizaki ice machines have um once i kind of narrowed that down, i kind of thought, okay, you know what i don't think this is a simple power switch issue. We need to look further so after that first batch of ice put my service gauges on it and that 300 psi head pressure, just kind of caught me off guard. It wasn't horrible, but it was just like.

Oh okay and the temperature outside rose really fast, too um. When i got there, it was like in the 70s and by the time i got to the video clip, it was almost 90 already. It's been happening out in the desert like that real quick. So we have cool evenings really hot days, but anyways that can also lead to some other problems too, but we'll get into that so um.

The next step is okay. Let me think about this. Is there any safety limits? Okay, the hoshizaki ice machines. You'll get a three beep safety limit, um, there's a couple other ones too that happen, but when that happens, the machine locks itself out and it keeps beeping until someone physically goes and resets the safety limit.

That was not the case. Nobody had gotten into the machine. It did not have to be reset, so i had to think whatever's going on with this machine has to be something that won't cause a safety limit to manually, lock the machine out important key word right there: okay and uh. So then i start thinking: okay uh.

It could be a water float issue. You know the machine will never go into a freeze cycle if it doesn't ever get water. So i checked the water fill. It was filling fast enough.

It filled up the sump. If you want to check the water fill drain, the sump completely turn on the water inlet valve and time how long it takes to fill up the sump. If you can find out what size sump you have, then you can figure out the gpm of flow rate. That's coming into that machine.

Okay, now i kind of ruled out a water related issue. So then, i started thinking huh and i saw that higher than normal head pressure, and i said you know what condenser issue, because a high pressure safety doesn't lock out the machine but it'll turn it off and then turn it back on when the pressure resets. It basically interrupts power to the machine, just like a bin thermostat. Now a bin thermostat is another thing that would cause an issue if the bin thermostat was broken, it wouldn't let the machine come on okay, so i was kind of ruled down the issues to a bin thermostat, someone leaving the power switch off or a high pressure Issue and when i saw the higher than normal head pressure and investigated on the roof.

That's when i found the condenser fan motor stuff. Now again disclaimer i told the customer look um. I don't know if this is the only problem, but this is what i found. Okay and that's the way that i approach my service calls, i'm not always perfect um, you know the customer hasn't called me back yet, but i mean sometimes stuff happens.

Okay, sometimes there's something going on that. I can't see at the moment. In this case, i think i was pretty dead on with the condenser fan motor issue yeah and that's it. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video uh.

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