This video is brought to you by Sportland Quality, Integrity and tradition. Good morning it is! Sunday November 26th It's about 8:00 a.m. I Got an emergency service call on an ice machine not working. So this particular ice machine.

they've been dealing with it for a couple days. It's been a problem, but it finally got to the point where they said they needed me to come out. they were hoping I was going to come out on Monday But then they decided they wanted me out today. So that's what we're here for.

Um, um, they said they were troubleshooting a lot of stuff themselves. So uh, let's get into this. Um, I'm assuming they turned off a breaker. so let me go find the breakers and turn them on and see if we can figure out what's going on.

The thing is definitely dirty, but I'm not here to clean today. I'll do temporary cleanings but nothing major. that is a not an overtime thing. I'm not going to waste my time cleaning a machine, but I'll you know, get it operational.

So let's go turn the breakers on and see what we can find. All right. I was find this comical. The ice machine has an email.

it's this particular brand manat. Um I Believe that means the Bold needs to be changed on this guy right here. I Believe Yeah, it's flashing red, but that's not something that's going to cause the machine to die if I can turn. Yeah, you can see the Flash in red typically means there's a problem with the UV bulb ozone bulb.

Yeah, all right. Um, so I turned it on. It immediately went into making ice mode which is kind of strange range. Let's just observe the machine.

Now this is a manat walk. Um, and this one is a quiet Cube machine meaning that the compressor's on the roof and down here is just an accumulator, a pump and the evaporators. or I'm sorry a receiver, a pump, expansion valves, evaporators. Up on the Roof is a compressor and an accumulator.

So I'm just going to monitor it. in order to monitor it though. I'm want to go into service real time data time temp. It's in a harvest, so I'm going to kick it out of a harvest.

and O Interesting, It says full bin, full bin. Okay, that was kind of odd. Um, let's have a look right here. So what causes this machine to think that it has a full bin? Look down here.

There's nothing in the bin. Okay, is these dampers. These dampers first have a magnet in them. There's a magnetic switch.

I Can get this off. hold on a sec. So there's a magnetic switch right here. and when this damper opens and closes, it actuates a magnet.

So if we go in here and we go into service and we go into realtime data inputs, there we go. now. look see how that's a curtain switch? One curtain switch, two, there's okay. So if I actuate this one open, closed right because of the magnet.

Now if we come over here, look at this one. The magnet fell out so it thinks the machine is full of ice because the magnet fell out of the curtain. Or they actually call it a damper. The reason why we call it a curtain was on the old machines.

they physically had a curtain that had a magnet. And for the old school people that have been working on these machines for a long time, when they came out with this new design, we just kind of default and still call this a curtain even though it's technically called a damper now. So this guy's missing a magnet and that makes the machine think that it's full of ice. So I need to go get a new uh damper out of my van.

So I stocked these dampers for the most part. Now this happens to be my last one because I've gone through a run of these lately I've sold like three or four of these in the last week, but I had one more in my van. so we're going to go and put the damper back in and then it'll actuate the magnetic switch. Um, the machine was also doing something weird where it started in a harvest, which is really strange.

Uh, so we're also going to update the firmware for the board because it starts to do wacky things and sometimes updating the firmware. It's not normal for it to start and harvest when it has an open curtain, something's not right there. So I'm going to update the firmware real quick once. I make sure it comes on and then we'll watch the machine make ice.

um I Also have a UV bulb cuz I stocked those in my truck too. So we'll change that UV bulb and then uh, as long as it makes ice, it'll get them through the weekend. and then I'll send a technician out here to do a proper cleaning on this machine during normal time. But let's see what happens when I put the curtain in or damper in so it just goes in with these little tabs.

So when I release this, this thing should now sometimes it has a delay. So let's go into here service: real time data inputs and now it says both curtains are closed so it's just got a delay cuz we just did that. So what I'm actually going to do is turn it off and we're going to update the firmware really quick. Um I Carry a US USB flash drive that has the new firmware on it I Keep it right here.

so I'll pull this off, we'll update it, and then we'll change the UV bulb and then we'll start the machine up. so we go into here. Service: USB Setup USB Stick Download firmware, Press the check. Okay, so now it's downloading the new firmware off of that.

and while it's doing that, I'm going to pull this uh UV bulb out. So the UV bulb is there. It has a UV light and it has an air pump and it carefully just pushes air um, or draws air across this guy and sanitizes the air essentially. Now I'm not a fan of UV bulbs in residential applications.

Um, because I Just don't think that they do what people think they do. but in an ice machine application because we're actually moving air, it's designed for it. It really does make a difference and it helps to keep slime, buildup and things down in this machine. well.

I got the new bulb, got the old one out, and I realized that this happens. They have ice machine cleaning companies and I constantly find that these are broken because they don't understand. they break them. So let's see if I can fix this.

This is supposed to be a fix to that and then it pumps the air. So essentially it's just pumping the air right there. So let me see if I can fix this. silly people.

I Was able to get it up there. get the piece that was going through there pushed back. We'll definitely have to look into getting that piece. It's really common to find those things broken, but now you can see that we have a solid blue.

Just the luminize light is just illuminated blue. That's the proper operation and we're done with the clean mode. so we're going to pull that out and ozone bulb clear message exit and then we should be able to turn this on and it should start making ice. So we're going to put it into realtime data.

So we go to Service real time data time and temp and we go down here and we watch the frequency which is the microphone frequency that adars and we're going to watch this thing make ice. So it starts in a water. Purge There was no water in the sump, so it really had nothing to do. But now it's starting with a Equalization of the pressures.

So once the pressures equalize out, we've got a CBD relay that's on down here that's indicating that the compressor is running right there. We're in a pre-chill mode so we're filling with water at the moment right back there, but the pump is not running yet and the evaporators are going to start getting cold. and yes, I can feel them getting chilly so it's a pre-chill with no water flowing across it. Then once it gets to a certain temp, it'll start flowing the water and then the ice making process.

And then if everything's working right in about 12 minutes or less, we should. Harvest Two batches of ice on this guy. Someone made a good point in my comments and thank you for pointing this out. Uh, this is a manat Iy 1874 C -1 161x with a I Cvd 18953 Condenser D263 115 Volt 161 with the X means that it has the aluminize bulb right here and then the 263 indicates uh, actually I Think it's the 18953 or it's the 263 that indicates 2083 phase.

Um Machine was installed in 2017, so it's out of warranty. It has a threeyear parts and labor and a 5-year compressor warranty on these machines. The water pump has turned on and you can see that it's dirty because it's not getting an even flow of water. But water pump's running now.

So now it's in a freeze cycle and what we're doing is the machine's going to run and it's going to look for the microphone numbers to get up really, really high. And what it does is that is a microphone. We used to use an ice thickness sensor that would ground itself out, but we don't do that anymore. So we use a microphone and the microphone is not listening.

listening for the ice. It's listening for the water that's running across the top of the ice. and as that water gets closer and closer, the sound it makes is picked up by that microphone. They have dual inputs.

Uh, my logic. I've never been told this, but my logic as to why they have dual inputs is to weed out any nuisance. Like let's say you have a LED or uh, a fluorescent lamp right here. They actually make a really high pitch sound that's almost hard to hear by the ear.

but this would theoretic pick it up. So by doing two different frequencies, it's basically a fail safe. That way, when they see both of them get really high, it knows that it's full of ice. It's kind of redundancy if you think about it.

All right. This guy is very close to harvesting the ice. The ice is a nice thickness. you see how there's no ice right there.

that's because it's dirty up in the top. But we're looking really, really good. So we're just looking for the frequency to come up high enough to harvest the machine. We're hearing crackling and popping, so the ice is definitely thick.

Might even need to be adjusted a little bit cuz it should already be. So what I can do I can start tapping on it right there. Look at that. I'm manually harvesting it.

There we go. This guy needs a little bit of an adjustment because it, uh, just from experience that ice is thick enough to make a decent patch and we don't want it to be too thick. so we're going to watch that drop. I'll make a slight ice thickness adjustment to it and then we'll go have a look at the condensing unit and watch it make ice one more time.

You can see the vacuum being broken on both sides. You can see how it looks like there's water dripping. That's the air vacuum, the suction being broken by the air pumps they have Harvest assist pumps that help to break the vacuum to get the ice off faster. There's also they'll sometimes turn the water on too.

Okay, we'll come down here. Pretty typical to see one side drop before the other. See this one. it should drop here in a second so you can see that.

if it backs the ice up, leave this open like that and the Machine would shut off. Now it's pre-chilling again. I'm going to head up to the roof and have a look at the condensing unit. We'll watch it make another batch of ice.

I Lied I'm going to turn the machine off real quick. We're going to make a slight ice thickness adjustment. turn this guy counterclockwise about a quarter turn. now.

want to make sure that we're not I Know this is hard for you guys to see. So what we're doing is, we're adjusting the amount. It's sticking away from the evaporator and honestly, it's way too thick. Way way way too thick.

Now there's a tool that you use to set this depth. I Can kind of tell just by looking at it. Let's have a look at this real quick though. Oh no.

Look at that. There's a crack. so no. this thing needs to be replaced too.

Let's see if I have one of these in my truck. Yeah, this thing has definitely got a crack in it right there. That's not good, huh? I Wonder why that cracked? Oh well, let's see if I have one All right. I don't have a microphone a new one so I'll order that.

but I do have a Gap tool and I'll show you guys someone made me this Gap tool if you open up the book I think it says I think it's a 9302 drill bit. If you open up the tech spec book, you can download it or purchase one for this machine from Manis Walk Ice.com Um, it'll tell you like a 930 seconds drill bit I think someone actually made me this when I said that in one of my videos so you just barely wanted to tell touch and that's perfect so that's the perfect Gap I'm going to put this back on. this will get us by and we'll order a new one of those and bring it back when we clean the machine. All right.

My ice machine condenser is right here. Condenser is clean. don't see a problem there. don't see any real issues in here.

It's fan cycling. nothing too alarming. Uh, while I'm up here I'm just going to take a quick look at their AC's look at the circuit boards. make sure there's no error codes.

You flip the recall button, it'll display the most recent error code 82 main board reset so don't think there's going to be much wrong with this. It's currently running in heating mode cuz it's about 60 outside. 49 Before that four, that's a smoke detector 80 so let's look at 49. No.

24 volt. Yeah, the these are kind of weird ghost problems. Not really too worried about that. This guy's good.

Doesn't mean there's not anything wrong with the AC but I'm just doing a quick check both the inducer Motors are pumping heat. We're good on that. We're just going to do a quick check on the rest of the ACs this one right here. We just go right here to recall.

these are old school. Linux L Series Units Very versatile machines here. 82 That's the hoing. Yeah, these are just nuisance.

I Don't really pay much attention unless it becomes a problem. Okay, we're good on that one. No errors. Let's go have a look at the last one, which is their kitchen.

Oh yeah, heat. it's kicking on right now, so fine on that. Again, this isn't a maintenance or anything. I just I'm here.

so I might as well just check these units out really quick. Pop this guy open and the customer wants me to do this. They don't do routine maintenance, so they ask me when I'm here just to do a quick once over which. this location is an hour and a half from my shop, so it's beneficial for me to look into this.

69. That's a new one. 68 68 Okay, so we got three error codes: Gas Valve 2 Gas Valve 2 So we'll bring up to their attention that we've got active or not active. but we do have gas valve error codes on the kitchen.

AC For the second stage, let's open this up. make sure the gas valve's on. Oh I Remember this one. This one had a bird's nest in it.

It's turned off because it had a bird's nest and it needed to be cleaned out and have a proper startup on it long time ago. I Shut this thing off. Looks like someone pulled the bird's nest out, but I don't feel comfortable just turning it on without thoroughly going through it. You can see all the bird crap in here too.

So yeah, that one shut off for a reason. so I'll bring that to their attention. This unit needs a heat start up. needs to be gone through to make sure there's no issues.

You don't want any crap inside the combustion. Chambers Catch on fire I Mean it is a combustion chamber, but still, you don't want that. So we want to get this all cleaned out properly. I Know there was a massive bird's nest in here at one point someone must have like swept it out.

but it wasn't me because the heat still turned off at the gas valve right there. So all right. Well, we'll bring that to their attention and let's get back to the ice machine. And there we go we are in our next harvest.

The ice looks to be about right where it needs to be. so let's watch it Harvest off and then I'll be done for today. There we go. Now we have ice.

That's it for today. We'll be back to clean it. I Don't mind going out to doing overtime calls? um I try to talk the customer out of them if possible, right? if it's not like a massive emergency uh, for an ice machine that is not a 911 priority for me So they had actually put this call in on a Friday and uh I did not go out on Saturday because I did not get a phone call I just got an email saying we had a ice machine down but because I didn't hear from the customer I was just going to wait until Monday but they actually called me on Sunday and said hey or actually they called me Saturday night and said hey, we need you to come out um you know we really are having to spend a lot of money on ice and I said well I'm not coming out on Saturday I said but I'd be glad to come out Sunday morning um and get it taken care of for you and so that's what we did. Went out there and got it taken care of now.

um I When it comes to overtime service calls with my company, the way that we operate is that an overtime emergency service call is is basically there to get the equipment up and running and it's at the discretion of myself or my employees as to how much work they want to do and what I mean by that is. The customer would gladly have me go ahead and clean that ice machine and be done with it right even though we're on overtime. Uh, because that location's an hour and a half away from my shop, travel time and all that good stuff cuz they got to pay us to drive back there. they would gladly just go ahead and pay us overtime on Sunday to go ahead and prop clean that machine and be done with it.

but I don't want to be there to clean the machine. So I'm not going to stay there and waste my Sunday cleaning an ice machine for a customer that doesn't do routine maintenance right? So they will get another trip back out there to clean that machine. and I also give my employees that discretion too. Uh, you know if they don't want to be there all day? Sunday I Mean if they want to get the overtime and they want to do it, then more power to them, they can go to town.

But I don't want it to ruin their weekend kind of a thing, right? But of course we have to go out there and get it operational. So in the case of me going out there, I went out there I was able to get the equipment up and running and we actually already went back out because we were there at that location doing something else and changed the ice thickness probe or the microphone. but we have yet to clean the machine. okay and we will be going back out actually, probably this upcoming week.

I'll be sending a technician out there to go ahead and clean that machine and then we'll be finally done with it. But you know we do operate a business and the customers satisfaction with my business is very important to me. but at the same time, my happiness, my well-being, my employees happiness and their well-being matters too now. I'm always going to be there for you know, 911 emergencies.

they got to walk in, freezer down. We got to do what we got to do to get that stuff up and running right because they have a lot of product. they got walk-in cooler down. they got a main AC down in the middle of the summer, middle of the winter.

of course we're going to do what we have to do, but it's kind of like a triage repair. We're going out there, we're just assessing the total issues, we're getting them up and running, and then we typically go back, uh, with a follow-up visit to finalize and you know, finish everything. That's just how we operate. I'm not saying you're wrong for not operating that way I'm not saying that I'm the right person for doing it that way.

That's just how my business operates. If you do it differently or your company does it differently, then so be it. Okay, but my happiness and my employees happiness, um, is of utmost concern to me and of course the customer being satisfied. But the customer also has to understand.

You know you're not doing routine maintenance. You're not having us clean those machines on a regular basis I Don't have patience Andor Time to come spend my Sunday and clean your machine and again, my customer is not upset with that. They totally understand. You know it is what it is.

So I was able to go out there I was able to get the equipment running I changed the UV bulb cuz I had one of those in my truck. Went ahead and changed the ice damper, watched it make a couple batches of ice, found that we had a bad thickness probe because it was cracked. Went ahead and got it operational but had a technician come out and follow up and finish that up. and the Machine has been working great so now we just got to do the cleaning on it and then they'll be good to go.

And for everybody in the comments right now because I know there's going to be a lot of people in there Ice machine technicians you totally understand. but for the people that don't regularly work on Ice machines, that machine is not even dirty. Okay and what I mean by that? Of course it has some pink buildup and stuff, but it's not like there's going to be people in the comments saying oh my gosh, that restaurant needs to be shut down. Get I Give me any restaurant, any restaurant and I can find a dirty ice machine.

Okay, I can find something in that ice machine that someone would Panic about that kind of stuff doesn't really bother me I I would still gladly get ice. Uh, for instance, you know I don't work at Subways but I go to Subway every once in a while and get a sandwich I still get drinks even if I don't service the restaurant I Know the ice machines are dirty. That stuff doesn't bother me. it's the same stuff that you're breathing in the air, you know? I'm sure that you know a doctor can tell me that there's bad things, but I don't know I don't really sweat the little things like that.

Some pink crap in the ice machine of course I Want to take care of it and solve it, but to say that that is a disgusting ice machine is not true. Okay, that ice machine is really not that bad. It can get a lot worse if we don't take care of the issue now and clean it up. Just my two cents on the matter I Really appreciate you making it to the end of the video.

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