This video is brought to you by Sporland Quality Integrity and tradition. Today we have a call on a Manitowoc ice machine not working. They're saying it's working, but it's just working slow and if you look, we've got weird ice. Really weird.

It doesn't look right. So let's open up the machine and see what's going on. All right. We installed this machine not too long ago.

Let's open this up. see what's going on here? Nissan Um, oh, it's going to be a cleaning issue. or at least we got to clean it first. Whenever you're seeing this bad, it can also mean that like a dump valve is bad or something.

or a drains plugged or something because it shouldn't be that much calcium in a machine that's only a couple months old. Um, but uh, we got to clean it before we can go any further because this thing's pretty bad. So I went ahead and put the machine into a freeze cycle. It's a brand new free cycle.

Okay, um and when that happens, it should go into dump immediately. and I don't see any water coming out of the drain. so come over here. there's nothing coming out.

so let's check the uh, check the dump valve and the dump valve has power. but we're not dumping. so let's open it up and see if the dump valve is all clogged up with calcium or something. Come over here.

This is our dump valve. I Pulled the coil off of it so we had 115 volts. It sounded like it was opening, but it's interesting because I Feel calcium in here? That's not good so it's full of calcium inside the line the drains. There's not very much water coming out of it, so something's up there.

I Don't know what? All right? I Had them take out all the ice that they needed. So now we're going to run a thorough cleaning. The first thing I'm going to do is get the calcium out of the drain the drain hoses. Then we'll get cleaner in the machine, but we don't want to do that if it's not draining right.

So we'll work our way through and figure everything out. So something got in that drain and plugged it up. Look at all the calcium that's coming out. I Pulled it apart, cut it apart nice.

Got some of the Viper Nickel Safe Ice Machine cleaner. I'm going to pour it in there, dissolve the calcium, and hopefully figure out what's plugging it up. We'll do the same for this one too. We'll make sure that there's no calcium in that one.

All right. So I'm pouring ice machine cleaner in here full strength and it's coming out. I need to plug that up so it sits in there because it was bubbling out normally I would just change the pipe, but I think I can get it cleaned I Just shoved the plastic bag in it, filled it up with cleaner, and I'm letting it sit in there without even circulating it. I'm just going to pour some cleaner in the sump and just let it sit there.

It's being held back by the dump valve. So we'll fill this guy up with more ice machine cleaner than normal because we're trying to break up. There's a crap ton of calcium all in the drain pan too. Next thing I did was disconnect the power to the dump valve and we're going to put it into a clean cycle and um, go through turn off when complete.

Okay, so now the water pump is going to run. It's full of water and I'm gonna pour some more ice machine cleaner in there and just let it circulate while I'm finishing up with the drain lines. and I don't know if it's bad or not, but the dump valve is leaking by. There's no power going to it and we're getting water coming out.

It's just a trickle though, so it could just be calcium gumming it up. So I turned it off and we're going to pull this dump valve apart. That's the coil and let's see how bad this is. Oh yeah, it's just all calcified so we'll get that cleaned up and then I bet you it'll seal after we clean it.

All right. Got the dump valve back together. Um, we should be able to clean this guy. So I'm gonna put it back into clean mode and there we go.

Water pumps running. It's not leaking out anymore. so we cleared out the calcium. so now we'll let this guy just circulate with ice machine cleaner in there I'll actually pour a little bit more.

Normally you don't put this much, but this is a very extreme situation here and the ice that's left in there is going to all be burned, so no worries on that. We're going to let it circulate. It's going to try to dump and stuff, but it won't because I have the dump valve disconnected so it's just going to keep recircing that water and the drain is all hooked back up and it's draining now. So we're good.

I Don't know what was in there to plug it up. That's interesting, but okay. So now we've got it draining. so now we can tear the machine apart and do our thorough cleaning on the inside and get all the calcium.

We're gonna pull these out. Uh, so the original call was that it wasn't making very good ice. So all right now I had put it into a clean and it goes through its own self-cleaning where it turns itself on and off, dumps and whatever. And because I'm kind of going out of order here I Just disconnected the solenoid coil again.

now that it's out of water. I'm going to pour water and a normal amount of ice machine cleaner in there. now. let it circulate and then we'll rinse it.

So we're kind of not using the cycle, but you can't end the cycle. You have to finish it out. So we're just kind of working with what we have, just letting the hose go to town down in here burning all the ice and then we're circulating hot water and ice machine cleaner through the machine itself. They've also got some new water filters that are due this month 423.

So I'm going to put those water filters in while I'm waiting for the Clean Cycle to finish. All right. The sump needs to be drained a little bit more, but I pulled out the water level probe. It's a little dirty.

the pump definitely has some calcium right here, so we'll get that washed off and we'll pull the spray rails. Then we'll run a sanitizing solution through the machine. If you didn't know, these pumps actually come apart so you can get inside of them. just got to very carefully do it.

So we're going to get this guy all rinsed out and then we'll get it over there and get it sanitized. Still don't know what caused this machine to plug up the drain, but look at this like what is this? It's nasty. All right. Well, we're gonna get this washed out.

We'll get the back washed I already. I Haven't pulled the spray reels yet, but I pulled all this stuff out, cleaned it, and then like I said, we'll get a sanitizing cycle going. when you're cleaning these machines. don't forget underneath the drain pan back there and under there.

Those are all places that need to be wiped down and cleaned properly. and if you do it often enough, it's not that big of a deal. But if they don't do it like most people, then the machines just get permanently ruined with calcium. and this is a new machine so if we keep up on it, it'll be nice, you know? And I'm kind of letting some water run on that ice down there too.

The spray rails are pretty grody, some big old duties in there and stuff so we'll get that all cleaned out again. So what you want to do is take some of this food safe, silicone grease. Um, it's food grade. put it on the O-rings and then spread it around and what that'll do is it'll make it easier for these O-rings to not get dried up and get stuck when you're trying to pull these spray rails out next time, because these spray rails, if you've never done them before, they can be a chore sometimes.

All right. Went ahead and poured one more bottle of Viper in there. I'm going to run it through a whole nother cleaning cycle and then we'll do sanitizer at the end of that because I just want to make sure that we get everything out of the hoses and all that stuff now that I broke everything free I Ran straight, tore it down, cleaned as best as possible. Got underneath here, cleaned under there.

We're still working on getting the ice out. probably gonna do a lunch while this last cycle is going and then, uh, hopefully we'll be able to watch it make ice and we're on the last one. So I'm gonna pour in some sanitizer and then, uh, see if this guy can make ice. All right? I Just got finished running the sanitizer through it and now I just turned it into a freeze cycle.

so we're gonna watch it make ice. We go into real-time data, time and temp and it'll tell you what's going on. It's a good sign that all the sensors say 70 degrees. the last three aren't used, so that's why they say negative 22..

So we're gonna watch this guy make ice. now. It's going into a harvest right now. It might be ever so slightly thin, just a little bit so I might need to thicken it up just a bit.

And did you see there was a little chunker in that little ice right there? So we're gonna burn that ice before we give it back to the customer. and I'm gonna thicken it up just a hair and uh, that's it. We should be good to go. Um, don't know what caused the plugged up drain but took care of it and cleaned the machine.

Sometimes when you're working on these ice machines, they have weird quarks within the programming cycle. So this particular machine once you put It into a clean cycle. unlike previous Manitowoc models, you cannot take it out of a clean cycle. So you have to finish the whole process and it's a pretty long, lengthy cycle.

So with that being said, sometimes you have to learn how to work with what you have and hack it to make it work the way you want it, right? So in this situation, when you're going through the the lengthy Clean Cycle What it does is it. It'll periodically flush the machine out and what they're trying to do is let's say you pour cleaner in there. It'll run for an extended period of time, and then it'll dump the water, refill the water, circulate it for a minute, then dump it again down into the drain, then just keep doing that a couple times to try to make sure that it flushes out all the cleaner. Well, that can be a problem if you have an extremely dirty machine and you just want to circulate the machine or the cleaner for 15-20 minutes at a time.

Okay, another queer. a weird little note that most people don't know. and I I Recently found this out within the last 10 years. Okay, is that ice machine cleaner doesn't stay effective for very long.

It actually loses. Um, it's it's Uh, Effectiveness Essentially, it goes neutral is what happens. Okay, so when you put the ice machine cleaner in there, you can't leave it in for 24 hours. It's not gonna clean calcium and disintegrate the calcium the way that it does within the first 20 minutes.

So usually most ice machine cleaners they will go neutral after about 20 25 minutes and then they're done. So there's no point in leaving an ice machine cleaner circulating any longer. Okay, so with that being said, this machine was going to fill up and then flush. and then rinse.

and then flush. and then rinse. So instead of letting it do that once, I broke everything free and manually clean the drain lines and stuff out I didn't want to dump that cleaner down I Wanted to get the most effective amount of time out of it I went ahead and disconnected the dump valve the electricity going to it. So that way, even though the machines program itself was activating the dump valve, the dump valve wasn't hooked up so it just kept circulating for that extended period of time that I wanted.

So that's one little thing. Also, again, it's really important to understand that most ice machine cleaners like I said they go neutral after 20 25 minutes somewhere in there. so there's really no point. I Personally was taught in the past you know on extensively dirty machines that you would just pour ice machine cleaner on there, set up the machine, so that way it would run the pump for you know, eight hours or something like that and help it to clean.

but knowing what I know. now that really didn't do anything after the first 20 minutes. Okay, 25 minutes, 30 minutes at Max Okay so that's one important thing to know now with this particular machine. I walked up they said it wasn't making very good ice and it was slow production.

immediately. when I saw the quality of the ice, I was like there's something wrong here. Then you guys saw when I went up with the camera and the clip and it was like oh, there was a lot of calcium Now I know that on these Manitowoc machines just because I work on them a lot. If you ever see that much calcium, there's something wrong.

It's not just simply a dirty machine. Okay, there's something causing that. and I mentioned even before I figured out what it was, it's usually a bad dump valve or a plugged up drain. and in this situation, it was a plugged up drain.

Now what caused the drain to plug up? That's a good question. I Really don't know there was no Smoking Gun You know sometimes you'll see like hey, there's something stuck in the drain and it'll come out. There was just calcium. the drain was level I Installed the machine not too long ago, six months ago to be exact.

Um, so it's been in operation and everything's been working fine, but all of a sudden the drain plugged up. The only thing I can think of is occasionally what'll happen at these restaurants and I've seen it a few times is they'll be like cleaning or something like that and they will shove something under the machine and it'll block the drain. It's a possibility that that drain was getting blocked by something for an extended period of time. Uh, it's it I don't know though.

like the more I think about it I mean it would have to be under there for a couple days of of no draining for and I guess that's possible. It's always possible that they didn't clean under there and something was propped up, wedged underneath the drain line and just not allowing it to drain. But it's hard to say because once I cleared the calcium out of the drain, that's all that it was. it was, you know I was just able to run it like normal and it's draining like normal I made sure that there's a proper pitch on the drain line like everything seemed fine.

so it's hard to say what caused it. but all that I know is that I fixed it. Okay, so it took a thorough cleaning on the machine. Okay, very very thorough and we're not just pouring cleaner in there and walking away.

There's uh, some people out there. Um, and I will blame the ice machine manufacturers because oftentimes with ice machine manufacturers just like any other manufacturer, the ice machine manufacturers when they publish technical data. Oftentimes the sales department will have a say in what the technical data says. Okay, the sales department their job is to make their machines.

in this case, ice machines appealing to the customers. So oftentimes they will publish data saying our Ice machines only take this much time to clean. They're super easy. You push the Clean Cycle you pour the cleaner in and it'll automatically start making ice when you're done.

Okay, that's great, but that's not practical. Okay I Actually get joy out of going to Ice machine manufacturers training classes, raising my hands, asking a lot of questions, and then in front of the other people in the class asking the manufacturer's representative that's there, how long does it take to clean your ice machines And then they usually give me the Spiel Oh yeah, ours machines can be cleaned in 12 minutes. That's baloney. You know you need to tear down an ice machine.

I Showed you guys pull out the drain pan. Once You pull out the drain pan underneath. There's a bunch of just Gunk and stuff that never gets cleaned right. So I Encourage the Ice machine manufacturers and manufacturers of other equipment out there too stop letting your sales department have a say in what your technical data says.

Okay, the technical data, the user installation manual. in those that'll say oh yeah, it's really easy to clean their machines. No, it's not a proper cleaning on this machine right here. Okay, Today was in.

This video is a little bit excessive, but a proper cleaning. a full tear down on this single machine, melting the ice in the bin. you know, doing all that stuff is at least going to take four hours at least. Okay and I I bet you anything if you go through a technical Manual of some sort, it's not going to say anything about a four hour cleaning because the sales department has their say and they want the the end user, the customer that buys the machine to think that oh yeah, these things are super easy.

It's going to save me money to buy this ice machine. Yeah, that's that's an arguable statement. Okay, um, essentially, if you buy a Manitowoc ice machine, you're buying the quality, you're buying the type of ice, and you're buying the reliability. Now every ice machine breaks.

okay I work on a good majority of Manitowoc machines I'd say is the number one machine I work on and then Hoshizaki and I love them both. They're both good. Machines Of course they both have their flaws and they both have their issues a good majority of the time. The issues when it comes to ice machines is gonna be back to a lack of preventative maintenance on them, not properly being cleaned and uh, installation errors.

That's a good majority of the problems that I run into. okay, um, you know, and and it goes that way with all manufacturers. The sales department always has their say in the the, the marketing information and stuff and they always want to make it sound more appealing to use their machine. Okay, uh.

I if I was you know, had my own restaurant I would probably be buying a Manitowoc ice machine just because I'm very comfortable to work on those. Now that's another thing. Let's talk about this real quick just because I say that I Like Manitowocs I'm not vouching for them I'm not saying they're the best ice machine in the world because I'm just comfortable working on them. Okay, and that's a very important thing to understand when people ask me like I'll get emails from people and they're like just a homer.

Random homeowner will email me and they'll say hey, you know what you seem pretty popular on YouTube I watch your videos What's the best air conditioner I can buy for my house and my response typically to that home order is going to be. Find yourself a good service company and ask them what they're comfortable working on because that's the most important thing. The Service Company needs to be comfortable working on that machine. Now the price of the machine.

Of course that's important to the customer right? but if you don't have if you buy a Okay. So let's say there's a ice machine manufacturer out there called Vote Okay Vote Ice Machine. They do a lot of theme park work and big institution work. They make tube ice.

They're very complex machines. They have a lot of mechanisms and valves and all kinds of different stuff inside the Vote Ice machines. I've done work on them in the past. It's been a long time since I've worked on the Vote machines.

But the point that I'm making you go through a unexperienced service technician on a Vote Ice machine and he's going to be like lost. He's just gonna be completely confused and not know what's going on with that machine. But you throw a guy that's very experienced in a Vote Ice machine and he's going to be able to knock it out of the park because he knows the the quarks. He knows the sequence of operation.

So it's not that the Vote Ice machine's a bad machine. Okay, it's just that maybe myself or someone else is not as is well versed in the operation of that machine. Okay, so when I say that I like Manitowoc and Hoshizaki, it's because I work on those all the time and I'm pretty comfortable working on those particular machines. Okay, so in no way am I saying that they're the best ice machines out there.

Now if my customer asks me like hey, what's the best, most reliable brand, I'm gonna give them the exact answer. Here's what: I'm comfortable working on. They're pretty predictable. You know these are the problems.

These are the most expensive repairs. Here's the most common repairs. The cleaning cycle needs to be done this often and so forth. Okay, so that's my two cents on the matter.

Hopefully you guys got something out of this video. I Really, really do appreciate you A couple little Tech tips in the video. the silicone grease is really important and uh, you know I do really like the Viper cleaner. the Ice Machine cleaner.

It does really well. Just keep in mind that that is Nickel Safe Ice Machine Cleaner. Okay, there's some manufacturers out there that say not to use Nickel Safe Ice Machine Cleaner on their ice machines, so keep that in mind when you're doing that kind of work. Okay again I Really appreciate you.

Thank you all so much. If you haven't already, please consider subscribing to my channel and going and checking out my website Hvacrvideos.com We have merchandise available for sale on there. Some hats soon! We've got new designs for the hats coming, but the existing hat will still be on there. This is my favorite hat.

I Will always sell this hat. Um, this is, uh, put a lot of effort into designing this hat. It's really important. Black Underbill Flex fit and it's a breathable material so we've got some new Styles coming.

Those will be in the next probably a month or so popping up on the website, but again, that's Hvacrvideos.com If you're interested in supporting the channel and supporting what I do here and putting these videos out and stuff, there's a couple different ways that you can support the channel. The easiest way is just watch the videos from beginning to end. It's the easiest way, right? Other ways: if you're interested in supporting the channel, you can support the channel via Paypal Patreon YouTube Channel memberships There's links in the show notes of this video. Those are monetary ways that you guys can donate to the channel.

Also, if you're interested in purchasing any tools, go to Truetechtools.com I Have an offer code. Big picture. One word: Uh, We'll get you an eight percent discount on a good majority of the items on their website. There's a few things that discount doesn't work on, but when you use my offer code, not only do you get a discount, but I get a small commission from that so it's a great way to help support the channel.

So again, thank you so very much I Really do appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one.