This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition, so the complaint is that we got intermittent ice making, but today we're full down here. So it comes and goes they're saying so i cleared the ice had it naturally turn on and we're just gon na watch this i'm not going to play with anything because it's it's an intermittent problem, so i want to see it do whatever it's going to do. When trying to find intermittent problems, you have to really analyze what's going on, and the customer has not reset the board. They didn't even know where it's at so the machine is not going off on a long freeze or any of those errors that it can so you've got to think about that, and what kind of problems can cause intermittent issues if it's not being turned off by The board so so i've got a timer running, but this thing's making ice without hiccups.

I mean we've got ice already forming on the evaps, i'm going to jump on the roof, because a high pressure control cutout would cause this machine to shut off without shutting it off on an error. It would just make a single beep and then keep retrying. So let's go up there and see if the fan motors are messed up or something i've worked on this rack before we had condenser fan motor problems with the ice machines with bad temperature controllers. I don't know if that's the problem or not, i don't think so, but we have.

Unfortunately, this rack has no pressure control. It's just temperature for the fan motors, so we've got one fan motor running two of them. Not. I suppose, if i thought that was an issue, i should put a uh some gauges on this guy, but we're gon na get this guy opened up, see if we can verify proper uh temperature controller operation.

Um well. You've got both variable temperature controllers right there, so it looks like we've got one fan motor that runs 24 7 and then yeah two that are variable, i'm not seeing anything there everything's on okay, nothing is telling me to put my gauges on this other than wanting To look at the high side pressure just to you know verify if the condenser fan motors are a problem, but i'm gon na go ahead and analyze the full cycle. I just turned it into a freeze cycle. Just finished a harvest we're waiting for it to actually go into the freeze, because right now it's in the pre harvest or purge or whatever you want to call it.

It's gon na run water across the evaporators, put it into a harvest. It's going to look for discharge temperature via the thermistors and using logic from the board, and then it's going to put it into a freeze mode turn on the water pump and start flowing, but the hoshizakis. This model always starts in a harvest. So when it goes into the freeze cycle, we're going to start our timer, i have on my phone and uh at the five minute mark we're going to compare the pressures to what we have in their tech specs book well, at the five minute mark, we're running Just past five minutes we're running 40 and 233 and according to the tech spec book, uh 50 degree water.

You should be about 35 and 214, we're probably somewhere between 50 and 70 degree water, so we're right on the money. As far as the five minute mark goes, but another thing i was thinking about, we have to understand that head pressure is a little bit incorrect because we're manually controlling the condenser fan motors on the roof and hoshizaki machines. Typically, this style condenser wouldn't have a fan cycle control and they would run the condensers 24 condenser panels. 24 7., so those numbers could be a little skewed uh, something that concerned me was when it was in a harvest.

It sounded like we were feeding a massive amount of vapor to the evaporators, but it's also moving ice, pretty quick. So this is a hard one, because this does have a head pressure control valve back there and because this is on an aftermarket, refrigeration, rack. The last company has written how much extra gas they added to compensate for the line set in the rack. So they're saying the factory charge is 24 pounds back there and then they're saying to add 13 to that, it's quite a bit of refrigerant.

It's hard to say whether this thing's low or not, but again i might be chasing a ghost, because if it was a low refrigerant problem, you would think that we would be off on a safety limit, a long freeze and see we don't have that. So this is interesting, while we're waiting for the freeze to continue we're about 16 minutes in osuzaki publishes the pressures five minutes into the freeze cycle. But what we're doing sequence of operation is is this machine starts in a freeze? The water pump turns on uh liquid line, solenoid valves, open hot gas valve closes and we start the standard freeze cycle. This unit has three circuits.

Uh looks like three expansion valves all right and it's all feeding into here, serpentine over running into here and then running out. Okay, what tells the machine that it's full of ice? It uses time and uh water level. Okay, it assumes that when the water level drops, after a certain amount of time, that it's full of ice cubes and it's time to harvest it. So at this point, once you get past a certain timer within the circuit board, it starts looking at the water level flow and then, if the water level float drops, then it sends a signal and sends the unit into harvest mode.

So, at this point, we're just waiting for this sump to lower down in water. The way that it does. That, though, is that it only puts water into the machine one time in the very beginning, and it has the full amount of water. It needs to fill this entire evaporator assembly up with ice appropriately, so it doesn't continue to add the water.

Also things you got to consider is that if the machine runs out of water prematurely because of some strange reason i.e the pump out checks for the check valve right here. If there's a sediment stuck in this check, valve it'll, slowly run water down the drain and prematurely drop the water level, and you would see that in very thin ice cubes uh in the case that we're dealing with right now we have normal size, ice cubes, uh. I've got some lexan pans in there because i'm going to catch the ice and do a production test here in just a minute all right, so the machine is in a harvest. Now, uh we've got hot gas going to the evaporators these lines.

All three are hot and it's starting to defrost everything. I've still got my stopwatch going, um we're looking good so far, i'm just going to watch it through the cycle, we're going to catch all the ice down here and then we'll weigh it and do a production check. Also as it's harvesting, it's pumping out the water. That's in the sump or draining sort of pumping it out really, but it's overflowing grabbing from the bottom of the sump by using uh the overflow tube and draining out all the nasty water.

So that way they can bring in fresh water with every cycle. So we're just about done now. A few cubes did fall out. So usually, what i do when it's all said and done is just grab one full scoop to compensate for all the cubes that fell out and we'll wait for it to finish.

Stop our stopwatch and then do the calculations using my watch. You can see total cycle time. 3145 freeze was 26 31 and then the harvest was 5 11.. So we're going to pull these out, weigh them and then do the production check so using the tech specs book it has a production check, but basically what you're going to do is take the total amount of ice.

I rounded it to 46 pounds of ice produced in 31 minutes total cycle time. Take the minutes in a day divided by 31 minutes, you get 46. We rounded it up to 47 cycles because it was 46.45. I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

So 47 cycles per day times the amount of ice okay. So we did the 47 cycles times. 46 pounds of ice produced equals 2160 pounds in a day. It's a hair on the low side from what the production chart says, but i'm not too concerned about that.

I'm still happy with that um there could be some. You know, messed up numbers in my weight. Maybe i didn't account for as much ice that came out and stuff, but i don't see anything wrong with the production um and the machine's making ice in a timely amount of time. I don't know what else to tell them another thing that could account for uh.

Less production is more than likely. We have it set to max, freeze or max harvest time, which is stops a lot of defrost issues. When you have ice hanging up and stuff so we'll usually go in there and change the dip switch settings to change it to max harvest time, um yeah, i don't know what else to tell them on this one. Some other things to check is the float switch hanging up.

Is it not put to? I mean the uh thin switch. It's not hanging up. This is a newer bin switch. The machine itself is in relatively clean condition.

We've got good water coming in. I don't see what can be the problem here. This is uh. This is a mystery.

I mean you know it's possible that someone shut off the switch it's not loose or anything, but that is the switch for the machine. When i change these temperature controllers - i don't know about a year ago or whatever it was. I put them back to the factory settings where the factory had them set at i'm gon na go ahead and make some adjustments uh. All of these units do have head pressure control valves, so i'm gon na go ahead and drop the temperature because basically they're maintaining 85 to 90 degrees outdoor ambient.

So when it gets above 90, one condenser fan motor turns on when it gets above 85. One condenser fan motor turns on we're gon na drop those down a little bit uh. Just because i i mean what if every one of these compressors turns on and the condenser gets really hot uh the space inside there gets. I don't know it's hard to say.

If that could be a problem or not so we're gon na go ahead and um drop those down a little bit and then again just tell the customer to keep an eye on it all right. So what i did on this one was: it turns the condenser fan motors off at 75 degrees and on at 80, and then this one turns the condenser fan motors off at 70 degrees and on at 75.. So we're going to run that see now. The only thing that this it's dropping, the condensing temp, is what it's doing.

Okay, so technically you'll make stuff more efficient, but you also don't want to um drop the condensing temps so low that the liquid temperature drops too low because that can affect the expansion valve performance. On the flip side, these units all have head pressure, control valves that are going to be set for about 180 psi. This whole system is 404a, so they're set for about 180 psi. So this is just added to the head pressure control valves.

So so long as the systems are charged appropriately, the head pressure control valves are probably going to open up a little bit more um. But again i'm just i'm reaching on this one. I don't know what caused this ice machine to stop working um. This is an interesting one, so my logic is: is that maybe uh the head pressure went too high on a mild day and the condenser fan motors didn't quite turn on yet i don't know, though you know this is an interesting one.

Again. This ice machine tells you, if there's a long, freeze or a long harvest, but if it goes off on a high pressure, it automatically resets and then starts the machine back up. It does make a single beep, but it just restarts now if it goes off on long, freeze or long harvest, it locks itself out and does that beep beep sound you know over and over and over again. So i don't know this is an interesting one.

Um. It could be a nuisance call or you know, i'm gon na. Let the customer know i i didn't find anything other than making a few adjustments. So they're gon na have to keep an eye on it and there's a very good possibility.

We might have to come back whatever the issue is, it might not be presenting itself at the time, so i watched the machine naturally go through about two harvest cycles or two cycles didn't see. Anything funky did put my gauges on it checked. The refrigerant pressures they're within line also did a production check, it's relatively close to where it should be. I did confirm that the machine has uh is set up for the longest harvest possible, so it does, it is.

Is making that that would account for the low production because as a long harvest? Basically, i also warmed up both temperature controller sensing bulbs and verified that the fans did come on. So all the fans are running in the right direction and working properly. One more thing to check out is look in the bottom of the bin. Look at the ice formation like look at what the cubes look like um those look a little wet, but we're not seeing water overflowing, but i mean there are hoshizaki cubes down here.

They look okay. This is a little peculiar, though look at that that's interesting. Let's see, i checked the water float. Water float looked good.

We don't have too thin of ice cubes every once in a while you'll see some thin ones, but for the most part we see full ice cubes here, but that little pattern right. There is a little interesting. Let's look over on this one yeah. Look at this see that's indicative of water falling on the ice cubes, but it's draining huh! That's interesting! This.

This just got me curious about why the ice cubes look like that right here! Look good! These are good! Cubes uh! We came back out today. It's been a couple weeks since i've been here last and the machine is making ice. Fine, no more issues whatsoever, so i'm gon na go ahead and put in new cube guides to prevent them from getting stuck. I'm also gon na pull the water pump to see if there's any broken pieces we'll see if they're in the water pump already but no problems.

Uh, since i was here not seeing any problems, but i'm gon na go ahead and run some ice machine cleaner through this guy just to be safe and then we'll sanitize it too from our hands touching all the parts. So i'm gon na use the viper nickel safe ice machine cleaner. This stuff works great in these machines. So so i filled up.

I drained the sump first uh checked the pump out spring make sure there was no problems check the water flow. There was no completely broken off pieces anywhere on the cube guide, so there was no need for me to pull the pump. Um went ahead and drained it just for giggles and then filled it back up until water started overflowing the drain. Then i put the unit into a wash mode and then i turn the cleaning valve and then pour it in the cleaner and i'm going to let the cleaner circulate for a few minutes.

The machine doesn't look that dirty, but i'm just giving it a good, quick, clean. You know just a rinse with the cleaner just to prevent any issues in the future. Potentially there was like a little bit of you know, sediment buildup in here, so maybe it'll clean. Some of that out so once that's done, we'll drain everything and then repeat the process with the sanitizer when it comes to draining the sump that has cleaner in it, pull off the main pump hose, put it in wash and push it into the drain.

It'll just flow right out nice and good, and then, when the pump cavitates stopped all right now we're running some sanitizer through whenever you're done, you should always run some sanitizer. That way, you protect the ice machine as you're backing out of an ice machine repair where you're touching the ice, surfaces and stuff new cube guides. That kind of stuff is when i really want to run a sanitizer just to clean any stuff. That's on my hands or on the cube guides or whatever.

So i pulled the water valve out just to see what the screen look like and it's full of these little beads. So i'm pretty sure this is from the water softener because they don't have filters on these machines they're little itty, bitty beads. So i'm thinking water softener let go or something i think i i can't get a valve locally, so i'm just going to keep trying to clean it. So these man, you got to be so careful about these, because sometimes it's hard to see, but we have these broken little guys right here.

There's you know several on here and right here and when these break off they'll get stuck in the machine and if you're lucky, they just gum up the water pump and the water pump just doesn't spin but uh. If you're unlucky, the water pump fails and a water pump job is an easy 1500 bucks versus you know. 40 dollar cube guide so always try to watch for these. If you're doing any work on hoshizakis push the cube guides and express to the customer the cost savings replacing these is nothing compared to a water pump.

So all right, you know, i never found anything wrong with the machine um, so the the customers - okay. So this is the frustrating thing, so i got a call out there because the ice machine wasn't working when i get there. The kitchen manager was there, but the kitchen manager doesn't speak very good english. Unfortunately, i don't speak spanish.

I wish i did but trying to get the story from him in broken. English was really really difficult. Um. I got a general idea, but it still didn't make sense, but my understanding was they came in one day the machine was out of ice.

They heard a funny noise from the machine, but that's where i started questioning. Was it beeping? No, it wasn't beeping. What was it doing? Was the machine running you know and he kept saying well, we could hear it running, but you know we come back. 10 minutes later and no ice and it's like okay, but i explained to him these machines don't make ice, but every 30 40 minutes.

So you're, never gon na see a lot. You know and he's like yeah and i go so was it out completely yeah? It was empty and then a few minutes later you know it was like you know about halfway, so i kept getting contradictory information. Basically, okay, so then um i go through the whole machine. This is one of those things where i just do everything i can.

I do a production test on it. You saw me i'm i'm, like you know reaching for anything. You know, i start thinking. Okay, the machine has safety limits inside of it right.

You have a long freeze, long harvest or the basic safety limits that the machine's going to go off on. If you have an iced up machine, you're, probably going to go off on a long freeze cycle, if you have well actually no you sometimes you won't go off on any kind of issue with a with an iced up machine but low refrigerant charge. Things like that. You can go off on long freeze, long harvest just depends okay, but the machine locks itself out and starts beeping at you all right um.

If you have a a low water pressure coming into the machine or no water pressure plugged up water filters, the machine is actually never for the most part i shouldn't say never, but usually it's not going to go into a freeze cycle at all. Sometimes, if there's just enough water going through it'll go into a freeze cycle, but that'll actually be a freeze-ups issue. If there's just enough water coming through i'm going off on, you know, weird workings in my brain. If you have a bin, thermostat or bin switch, not working the machine's not going to do anything.

Okay, so there's you know everything that they were telling me. There should have been a safety limit with the machine that i should have had to reset, and that was not the case the day, so they called me the previous day and said: hey the ice machine's been problematic, been giving us an issue. Can you come out? I go out the next day, it's full of ice, so i don't know they're not busy uh they're dead, because you know restaurants are only open to outside dining, so they're not using a lot of ice right now. So you know it's not like they were just burning through production.

I do believe that the machine was low on ice um. I don't think it was completely out of ice um. So you know this is the stuff that i go through in my head. It's not just a simple hey: it's full of ice, walk away.

You know, i'm i'm, i'm still looking for something okay. Unfortunately, these calls i'm typically going to spend a little bit more time because i'm trying to find a problem because i don't want to call back, even though it wouldn't necessarily be a callback. But still i don't want to have to go back. You know, but i did explain to him when i was done.

Look i didn't find anything wrong. You know other than a couple things i did find some broken pieces on the cube guide, so i actually use that to my advantage right. So there was a couple cracked little pieces of the grid on the cube guide and i said, look we need to change those. I i you know got permission from their facilities director and said: hey trust me, you want me to change these cube guides.

Let me go ahead and order them and come back, and what that did was that gave me. It was like a week or two in between before i came back to see if they had any more problems right, the call was still open. Okay, so that i like, when i can do that kind of stuff, because i left the call open so in their eyes, it wouldn't have been a callback, even though you and i both know that it wouldn't have been a callback, because i did everything i could. But still in the customer's eyes, i left the call open.

You know came back with the cube guides uh. I think it was a week and a half later a week and a half later and they haven't had any problems since okay, i think that someone turned off the machine because that switch that i showed is actually a three-phase power switch that shuts off the whole Machine, so i think that someone switched that off and went and turned it back on before a manager realized, and then they called over a manager to say it was low on ice. The manager said the switch was on, the machine was making noise and i think especially this happens on host zacchaeus machines. They don't sit there and wait for 30 minutes.

You know, so i think they just kind of panicked. I feel like they probably could have waited. You know, but you know whatever it is what it is, so i did my best to go through everything. This is where understanding the sequence of operation really comes in handy.

I understand not. Everybody's gon na know how to work on everything, but you really need to understand the sequence of operation to know what to look for in these situations. You know really got me thinking about the condenser fan motor operation and the temperature controller set points. It's really not.

The best idea, the way that they cycle those condenser fan motors, because you know they don't pay attention to any of the pressures in the system and they just simply cycle on temperature. So just imagine if they lost one of those condenser fan motors if they lost that primary condenser fan motor, then everything in the rack starts running, but the other two condenser fan motors aren't going to turn on until the ambient temperature drops. So that can be a problem. I guess in hindsight, it'd probably be a good idea to take those condenser fan motor sensors for the temperature controllers and route them into the um uh, the the condenser fan motor uh area.

So that way they can actually sense the ambient inside the condenser. So then you could, you could set them accordingly, that's probably a good idea, maybe the next time i do a preventative maintenance or something we can reroute those in there. So that way they would kind of half-ass cycle on condensing temperature kind of right. It would be, you know a half-assed way to do condensing temp.

It's really not the best idea. There um. I guess it probably wouldn't even be the end of the world. If we just ran those condenser families all the time and then you know, because we are in southern california, so in that area is up in the desert at a minimum that gets into the 20s.

You know so, i think the head pressure control valves can handle flooding the condenser appropriately to maintain head pressure, but at this point i'm just kind of rambling. I never found anything wrong with the machine. I did everything in my power that i knew of um the the ice, the funny looking ice, how i said it kind of looked like it had been getting wet. I think what's happening with that, because the drain's not plugged in the bin or anything like that and i'm not seeing any overflow situations we're not overflowing with water.

I checked all that um. I think that those cubes are actually melting uh, because they're not being used fast enough. I think they're sitting in the bin and melting down. That's that's the only theory i can come up with with that funny.

Looking cracked kind of ice cube, looking thing: um yeah, you know we can't win them all um. So i did everything i could. I gave the customer the best opinion. I can you know i can't i explained to them.

I said: look, i don't want to stay here and waste your time, but i also don't want to leave if you know there's a potential problem, so i spent a couple hours going through the machine you know. Did my best came back on the follow up changed the cube guides went ahead and ran some ice machine cleaner through it that was kind of a trip about the uh, the the water inlet valve, though i wasn't seeing any problems, but i figured i was running Cleaner through it, i just pulled the valve. Apart just to check it, you should always be checking those water, inlet valves. I think a lot of people forget those when they're doing ice machine cleanings but yeah.

I actually found what looked to be like water, softener beads. In there, so that's something we got to watch for too yeah hey. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end. If you haven't already please consider subscribing to my channel leave me some feedback down in the comments.

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