This video is brought to you by spore'ln quality, integrity and tradition. Today we have a service called an ice machine, that's not working, and the first thing we do when we open it up is just look at the ice. Look at the formation of this ice tells you a lot about what's going on here. You know it.

That's some pretty nasty. Looking stuff there, it's like not making a full sheet and it looks like maybe the ice is having a hard time falling off the evaporator and it's melting it. So you got to kind of use your senses, don't just jump in with being blind. You know you got to kind of look and investigate a little bit.

Talk to the management asked them. You know symptoms that were happening and such so. Our left ice machine is making ice, but we're in a safe mode, and our right ice machine is off with an error message in there that little asterisk in the Triangle, as an error message. So, let's dive into it, see what we can find.

There's some funky ice going on and then it's got like really really low water and it's struggling. You can hear the pump cavitating or in a harvest. Take a water related issue to me and we'll watch it harvested see how partner okay. So it was only half of the sheet, though up probably yeah, so that's nasty, okay something's going on there, so we're gon na get the rest of that melted off and then we're gon na proceed you starting over with troubleshooting, so we're currently in the water fill And then I've got barely any water coming into the scene.

It doesn't usually, you can hear the water flowing through the water level probe, which is that beige tube back there it's kind of hard to see, but it's like the smallest little trickle coming in so we're gon na go. Look at the water filters looks like we have low water flow, that's the one that's not being used, so I pulled the filter cartridges out of here because they were plucked and that's high pressure, while it's flowing out. So we have clogged up water filters and now you can actually hear it flowing into it. So yeah definitely low water flow, a little water pressure.

So looking good diagnosed past that point, here's the filters and like just they're, just plugged up internally the jackets all discombobulated. So once I corrected the water flow problem, I put the unit into wash mode and let the water circulate and get rid of all the rest of the ice. So now we've got all the ice off the evaporators and we can go ahead and start diagnosing. I'm feeling it's gon na be working fine now that we got water pressure to the machine, but we're gon na go ahead and go through everything.

So I'm gon na go through my service guide, so ask for the models and serial numbers and this service guide here. Does not tell you how to diagnose it. Just gets all the information, so you can do your job easier, so collect outdoor air, temp, evaporator, water, inlet temp, is the Machine off on an error. Yes, is there an error code present? Yes, what error code, safe mode and multiple errors and then basically gives you a walk through write down what the sensors read while the machine is off.

Obviously, that 111 is one of the sensors and that's indicating to me that there's a problem with the evaporator sensor or the thickness sensor, water level probe and condenser clean, no they're, not so before we go any further. We're gon na look at that stuff. So basically the water pump. I pulled it out, it's a little bit of calcium, but I mean it's functional, that's not a problem, but look at our calcium buildup on the water level.

That's a problem, and then what you do is you hold a microphone or thickness sensor inspected, it doesn't look horrible and then you shake it because often times the seal can fail and they get full of water. So you just kind of shake it put it up to your ear and you'll, hear water in there you'll know or if it looks bulged out or cracked okay. So this is all before we even start up the machine. So we know that this guy needs to get a little clean, so we're gon na give this a rinse, real, quick and then we'll proceed from that we're just cleaning.

I remember I don't like to fill these pans too much because they don't like to get moisture and water all the way up into the sensors. Because and I don't submerge them completely because even though they're sealed as they get older, the seal stops and then it creates problems. So this right here, I use a pan that is so that the pump can't tip over because you don't want the pump to tip over inside of there and then just fill it up put a little more a little Baro. But just what I'm sit for a minute? Okay, so I'm not doing a cleaning on this.

I just cleaned this. The ice you know just ran some cleaner through it real quick, mainly I'm not so concerned about the pump, as I am the water level probe. So we got this cleaned off pretty darn good again. This is not a thorough cleaning.

This is just to get them running. Another thing to remember, too, is ice. Machine cleaner, doesn't last for more than like 20-something minutes. I know there's someone who can correct me with, but it goes neutral after so much time, so you know leaving it in there for more than 20 minutes is basically just circulating water.

So at that point you know it's nothing so also when you clean ice machines. If you're, like I'm gon na clean the other machine, sensors, real quick, you only have so much time alright, so I'm just going to do this for shits and giggles, just because I like to clean these things. Let's run this guy up and see what happens. I've seen worse, it's pretty clean, very good got ta.

Give that one credit now granted. There is a lot of stuff up in here that we can't get to that runs back behind the machine runs over and back this way. So, just because I push this up it and go all the way through that so yeah this one's, not bad at all. Okay, I'm not doing a full teardown on this thing, I'm just I went ahead and ran that leftover cleaner through the machine, real, quick and then we'll run some sanitizer and then we'll continue with our troubleshooting.

I'm not scrubbing tearing down machine or anything like that. It doesn't, I don't think it warrants that so we're just doing a quick clean just because there was some calcium buildup on the grid plate and then, after that, we'll continue our troubleshooting okay doing our quick, clean and our sanitize. So now we're gon na start. The Machine up and fill out my checklist - I got my pressure probe hooked up right here, just go through it and watch the machine.

We're gon na report the pressures down on this sheet, every two minutes and then analyze everything after and compare it to the man is walking, look and what the publisher should be. So I'm in the process of filling out the sheet every two minutes and our ice is getting a lot. Thicker we're getting ready. We should be getting ready to harvest here.

Any minute pay attention to the microphone frequency settings. It's gon na hit like the really high thousands a lot higher than that a little weird that you've seen a discrepancy like that, because that's the two frequencies hundred Hertz and 120 Hertz, but usually those numbers are a little bit closer together, but so we're just watching It what about ready to make rice so we made a decent batch time, was like about a minute too long, but it's okay, I'm gon na, probably thin it up a little bit. The pressures were already close to being accurate, not enough to scare me away from doing anything so analyze. My pressure is where we should be using this bracket right here, because it's 65 degrees outside so we're below 70, so 252 to 2 to 35 and 50 to 36, so 57 to 38 to 32 to 32, so we're a little low on the head pressure.

But that's a common theme on these Manitowoc ice machines. Long as you don't see low and high low, then I'm pretty comfortable as far as the harvest. Pressure is 140 to 160, 5 and 70 to 95, so we're kind of close there 141 see. You know I mean it's not horrible, it might be a slight bit low, but we're just gon na watch.

The Machine operate. I'm pretty sure that our problem was just a water filter issue, so we're gon na tell them to keep an eye on it. If this ends a little bit discomforting, usually you just see the head pressure being low, but this one's right on the border of being low on the suction pressure too. So it's a possibility.

We could have a refrigerant charge issue well, like I said, I'm just gon na. Let the customer keep an eye on it and we'll see what we can do and just tell them to watch it. They got a good eye working ice machine. I'm gon na actually stand up the ice thickness a little bit too so we'll keep an eye on sync another tech tip.

So when you're working on these go to your event, log and clear it when you're done so then that way when you come back, your event, log is empty and you know if you see problems there, they're new, that helps you. We had a ice machine that wasn't working properly. We actually had two ice machines: the right side, ice machine had a bad fans cycle control, but anyways the left side machine. We had no water flow coming into the machine.

Okay and I ended up finding that the water filters were plugged up, which is you know, it can happen from time to time. I'm surprised because I usually don't see this style a water filter actually plug up. Usually, you can see like the ever pure cartridges plug up, but this style really takes a lot, so they just hadn't been changed in a very long time and I believe that the right side ice machine had been down for so long. I didn't get video of the right side ice machine because I had someone else working on that, but I believe that the right side ice machine had been down for so long and that's why those water filters didn't plug up.

I believe that the left side machine just went down, so I went ahead and cleaned up just a super quick cleaning on the machines, literally just cleaning the critical parts. I did go ahead and recommend to the customer that I wanted to come back and do a thorough cleaning and when what a thorough cleaning is for me is, is that we schedule with the customer they completely empty out the bins and turn off the machines. And then so that way, when we come in in the morning, we'll usually be there first thing in the morning, like it's 7:00 or 7:30, and then we'll go to town with a hot with a water hose hot water, blasting them machine running cleaner through it scrub. In every single part, down I'll even get inside the band and scrub the inside of the bin out, then we sanitize everything and you know usually go from there, but I always like to even even if it's something as easy as water filters plugging up I'm always Looking at the big picture trying to be thorough to make sure that there's nothing else wrong, you did see that I saw a little bit low pressures in the harvest, but it really wasn't too much to concern me.

I find it to be a common theme with the Manitowoc ice machines to run lower head pressure than what the book publishes. It's I've tried to correct it and you end up changing so many parts and it doesn't fix anything. So I stopped trying to fight that. One, and as long as we don't have low production and stuff, I really don't go down that rabbit hole.

Now, if I see low suction pressure, low head pressure during a freeze cycle, low suction pressure, low head pressure during a harvest, then I'm really gon na lean on reversion charge issues or something like that. But I really appreciate you guys taking the time to watch this I'll, put links to the tools that I used in the show notes of this video, for you guys and yeah. Send me some feedback via email, HVAC, our videos at gmail.com, or leave some comments down in the video, and let me know what you guys think: okay, I really appreciate it and we will see you guys on the next one.