This video is brought to you by Sporland quality, integrity and tradition. We got a call on a ice machine that is not working. Uh, the customer went ahead and they said it wasn't working. So they shut off the power switch and then cleaned the bin out.

But I have no idea what's going on inside the machine. so let's get it turned on and opened up. So when I open it, ah look at that. it's got a nice thick Frieza Okay, well we're gonna get it turned back on.

Uh, put it into the wash mode so the water pump circulates the water and then we'll go ahead and uh, defrost this and see if we can figure out why it froze up. So what we're gonna do is flip this into the wash mode and then I'll flip that switch on and uh, by doing that, the water pump should start running. There we go. Now the water pump's running and what I will do is get the water hose and start melting from the bottom with hot water and it'll it'll go into the sump and start getting recirculated the hot water and then it'll help me to defrost everything so we'll leave the water pump running the entire time while we're defrosting it when you're hooking up these hoses.

So I'm doing hot water always put a loop in the floor drain so that way um oh no, but it looks like the handle is missing so I'll have to get a wrench. Hopefully it still works but always put a loop so that way if it starts dripping it doesn't make a mess and then don't be a jerk when you're running the hose like run it kind of out of their way behind shelves and stuff. All right. Got hot water running now.

So now what I'm going to do is just spray the ice. I'm not going to focus as much on melting it from up here because that'll come. We're just going to get some warm water into the sump, start melting the ice on the bottom, so that way it slowly falls down into the cube guide and then the water pump is running at the same time circulating that warm water. Well eventually it'll turn warm and it's just going to take some time.

There's no way to really Rush This, It's just going to be a good half hour 45 minutes of hurry up and waiting. Personally, what I do is just hit the cube guide and aim for the ice right at the cute guide and melt it down at the bottom and then the ice with the water pump running will slowly start dropping and dropping and dropping. Now, this is a pretty bad freeze up, so there's a very good possibility that a cube guide might be damaged because of the weight of how much ice is here. Normally this customer does routine maintenance, but if the end of the year and they're trying to make their numbers look good, so they canceled PMS for December and I wouldn't be surprised if they push it all the way to March So this will probably start happening more and more because we probably would have caught this during a PM service.

You know it's not always this easy, but this one I can easily take the top off and kind of melt some of the ice from the top down too, so there's nothing wrong with that. just work on our way through just getting it. It really does look like one of the cube guides that's going to break. This is a pretty bad freezer, so all right, we are all defrosted front inside, all from the top.

We're good all the way down. It's a little dirty, but all the ice is gone. now. another thing is I'm looking at the spray rails because I can see them from the top.

They're dirty, but they're not horrible. Really important though, when the water's flowing, you want to check to see if you have good flow and this can be hard for the camera to see, but you want to make sure those little streams of water go all the way back because sometimes when the spray rails are plugged up, it'll not come out at the full back side and it'll cause freeze up issues too. Most of the freeze up problems that I catch are typically because of poor water being delivered to the machine and in this situation I can see a problem already. I've told them to get this fixed before and they didn't This is a braided line.

This is not the right size for a 2 000 pound Hoshizaki machine. You need to have a half inch ID inside diameter all the way to the machine. Well, I guess technically. Yeah, yeah, half inch inside diameter all the way to the machine for this guy to have the correct flow.

And this braided line is not good. So I don't know if that's the only problem. I've told them many times to get that fixed and they haven't Um, all right. Well, we're going to turn this guy on, see if it makes ice.

but we know it makes ice. but see if we can catch anything but before I turn it back on. We're going to check the evaporator for plate separation. So grab each one of these tubes when it's warm, move them up and down.

and trust me, when you find one that's bad, you'll know because this whole tube will move up and down inside the evaporator. This evaporator does not look bad. Um, even from that freeze up, it really doesn't look like it's that deformed. It's not warped so they're in pretty good shape on these evaporators.

See this tube right here. It gets kind of smushed down and it runs and then these stainless plates are braised to the tube and sometimes they can come loose and then it causes poor efficiency and can lead to issues. Yeah, I'm not seeing any problem. The vapor is nice and snug.

Everything's good. So I do want to run a cleaning cycle on this too, but um I kind of want to see it make ice first instead of just staring at the machine. I'm cleaning while the machine is operating. These are panels that don't hinder the operation.

This is the upper splash guards. Now the lower splash guards too much water runs into the bin, but the upper ones the the top insulated cover all that stuff. I'm just cleaning because why not? while I'm just waiting for it to make ice? Anyways, something really cool that you can use is a clean toothbrush and that'll help you to get in places and the bristles won't damage anything and down in here. I'm using a wire brush.

Okay, just being careful. just I mean again. I'm just waiting for the machine to make ice. so I might as well be scrubbing something you know.

But just be careful because anytime you use a metal brush, it leaves small gouges and that allows for bacteria and things to build up in the gouges. So just be careful not to over scuff. But I mean when you know it's really, really bad, you got to do what you got to do. but a good toothbrush is a good thing to use.

The machine is in Harvest So now we just need to pay attention to how the water is dripping through. So in a harvest mode, the hot gas valve energize, the water valve opens and it brings fresh water and it uses water to break the vacuum of the ice. If you don't have enough water going through, that can lead to freeze-up problems. So we're just watching the natural defrost to see if all the cubes fall or if there's going to be any cubes left over after the freeze cycle or the Harvard cycle.

I Should say all right. It went back into a freeze mode. so let's pop up here and have a look and see if there's any ice cubes left over. I Don't see any over here.

None there, none there. I Don't see any ice cubes left over. So this problem is going to end up being an intermittent problem. Probably don't see anything left over up here.

Nothing here. Okay, well we know that it makes ice in a timely fashion I Didn't time it, but it was fine. Um, so I'm gonna go ahead and run a clean cycle through this guy now with some ice machine cleaner and some sanitizer when we're done. um I don't think I need to pull the spray rails because they're pretty darn clean.

I'll just clean them on the surface. Ice machine cleaner has been circulating for a while I did a quick little wipe down on the front. It looks a lot better. Same in here.

it's not perfect. I'm not going to pull the water pump apart to get those little nooks and crannies, but it's better than it was. We're going to drain the fluid out. There's a couple different ways you can drain it.

You can push it out with a pump, pull that hose, dump it, you can. There's a drain plug right here on the back side of this wall, so there's lots of different ways in this situation. We're going to go ahead and pull the drain plug. So all that we're going to do is get up under here and right there is a drain plug.

so just reach under there with my hand, unscrew it. It'll drain all the water from the sump. There you go. It's actually renting off the bin control too, so we'll let it drain out.

We'll give it some sprays with water, flush it out, and then we'll run sanitizer through it. So up in here I Can see down that there's no, there's no need to brush this. It's clean. It was just slime build up everywhere.

I Can see in the spray rails I Can see the water distribution. It looks fine. No problems. push the ice machine cleaner through it, spray it all down here.

I Don't see any calcium buildup really. So we're pretty good to go on this. So we need to run some sanitizer through I need to put the top back on I've been just kind of flushing out the drain pan a few times because there was some sediment down in there and then we got to pull the pump out, spring the water flow. and then also when we're all done, we're going to shut off the water and pull the water inlet valve and make sure there's nothing stuck in the screen.

Well, that might have something to do with it. Extended freeze times: If the water float can't sense water, that's pretty nasty. pretty Grody actually. So we'll make sure we clean out that tube right there too and then disassemble the water float.

Yeah, the water flow is pretty calcified. actually really bad. so we're going to pull that too. so this just wipes down.

These new ones are super easy, but check this out. So this is the top of the float and the Breather Port is plugged up with calcium so you got to watch that it won't let it. Uh, it'll kind of get stuck. the water float will get stuck.

I'm kind of hesitant to say a water float would cause a freeze up because you still have I Mean it could, but you still have the safeties long freeze long. Harvest and if the water floats not letting it finish or freeze three consecutive times for more than 60 Minutes that can cause a problem. It'll go off on a safety. so.

but I guess it's always possible that intermittently it's sticking or you know, who knows. but we're gonna just clean it up installing the water flow back in after I cleaned it and I set it to where it's not maximum thickness. We want to reduce it just a little bit less odds of freeze-ups that way. Cubes are a little bit thinner, but less chance that they're so thick.

you know. Next thing, pump Out! Springs Always check the pump out Springs This one does not look too bad inside. I'll give it a quick wipe down, but there can be sediment build up on here and it'll It'll make the machine run out of water because this will get stuck open and then the pump will effectively pump the water down the drain. So the pump out Springs are a big problem, especially after cleanings of extremely dirty machines.

This one's not as dirty, but if there's a lot of sediment, they can be a problem. So we're going to get this wiped down and put back together. We're going to pour a little sanitizer in there, fill it up with hot water, turn on the water pump, and then I'll still add some more water, open the cleaning valve. the machine will not operate in a freeze mode with that open, but open the cleaning valve, and then we're just going to sanitize the whole inside of the machine including the panels and everything else.

spray sanitizer over everything, everything that my hands touched, and then put it back together. Now about this top. I Really, really want to fix that water line, but they don't approve me to, you know. And and here's the thing is is, this might be just simply because the machine was dirty.

the Frieza it's possible I Also, don't like that water line. You know you got to eliminate possibilities of things that can cause freeze-ups. And one of the more common issues that I see with freeze ups is pour Water now. Um I Still got to clean this water inlet valve too, but it relies on that water to break the vacuum of the ice.

And if it doesn't have a good steady flow of water, then oftentimes the ice will remains suctioned even with the warm gas running behind it. But you know I can only do what they approve me to do I mean it would only take me about an hour and a half or so between getting the parts and stuff that I need to to do that. But you know again, I'm limited by what they want me to do. so um, we're just going to keep on going and then I still got to pull that water inlet valve down.

went ahead and shut off the water and then got down in here and I don't see anything really stuck in the strainer so that is fine. Don't see a problem there. Put this back together and turn the water back on. All right.

Uh, unit sanitized. It's already about 15 minutes into the freeze cycle. We're gonna watch one more cycle, one more batch of ice and all should be good. I Burned all the ice that was down in the bin sanitizer.

All that good stuff. About as good as it's going to get for now and then. I Already talked to the customer again about letting me fix the water line or even getting the plumber to fix it. They're not approving it yet.

They're like on a spending freeze right now. My opinions on that but still not bad. We're 25 minutes in and we're in Harvest now. so we're gonna watch it harvest the ice and then before I'm done.

One other thing I'm gonna do: I've got the tech specs book here. This is the orange Hoshizaki book. You can get this from Hoshizaki Direct or you can download it. Um, I'm going to.

If it's not already been done, we're going to adjust the defrost completion timer to the maximum time of 180 seconds. so that's going to extend the defrost as long as possible. So tip switch one and two should be set to both to on, but we'll confirm that when it's done, we'll turn off the machine make the adjustments. Also, while it was in the Harvest cycle, I held in the bin switch and it shut the machine off.

so I wanted to make sure the bin switch was actually working and it is. So we're going to shut that off and then check The dip switch settings now. So right now it's currently set to a 60 second completion timer. We are going to go ahead and adjust that.

so um, we're gonna adjust one and two both to on. So if we go in here, do we look one and two right here? There's on on. So one and two are now both on. so we should have a 60 second completion timer now I'm sorry 180 seconds so that'll increase the defrost time just to confirm that all the ice has melted off and prevent further freeze-ups when you're working on ice machines.

It really does help to have at least a basic understanding as to how the sequence of operation works for that particular machine. Okay, Hoshizaki's For the most part with the Km models, they're pretty similar. They get a little different when you get into like the I think it's the KMS models I think I don't know, there's some, there's some weird ones, but on this particular machine, it's not really complicated. Okay, the circuit board is pretty basic.

It has a few safeties on it. Long freeze long Harvest um I think there's a high pressure safety and then there's like two or three more I Can't remember the the height. the long freeze and the long Harvest are the most common safeties. But in this situation, the customer I think they did a good job in identifying that there was a problem and shutting off the power to the machine.

Okay, it's always best if the custom camera does not get in there and start resetting safeties. Okay, because on a Hoshizaki machine, there's no memory. So if if that machine was off on a long freeze or a long Harvest then it wouldn't. Um, tell me that if the customer had reset the safety.

Okay, in this situation, it didn't get to the point where it went into a long freeze. eventually it would have gotten there. Um, I Guess that's arguable though, so maybe it wouldn't have gotten there. But regardless, I appreciate the fact that they shut it off and then once I came in I was able to diagnose it.

Okay, this particular customer too. They're on a spending freeze right now. They don't want to spend any more money than necessary, so they normally wouldn't approve an ice machine cleaning. but I was able to justify it because it was all iced up and it really didn't take much more.

But you know, an extra half an hour just cleaned it and got done with it. Okay, I didn't have to do like a crazy cleaning, but you did see that like that water float was just filled with like mud. Okay, some kind of a sediment. Who knows.

Again, they do routine maintenance. but there's every customer is different in the types of routine maintenance they do. So this particular customer does monthly maintenance. They have us come out every month, maintain the refrigeration, air conditioning, but you don't necessarily do it all at the same time, but they don't have us do PM service on the ice machines.

It actually helps because the way that it works with them is we just reach out to the customers. When we're doing our normal maintenance, we'll open up the machine, say hey, it looks dirty and then they create a work order and then it's just a time of materials cleaning. I actually prefer it like that because then you're not racing to get an ice machine cleaned underneath your PM agreement. It's just a pain in the butt so it's just easier to work this way.

Uh, and you know it's funny because in talking with a customer, the on-site management they were like, well, how come you didn't catch it on the last maintenance and I said well good question I Said what we do is we have a schedule set up where June and December is we open up the ice machines, have a look inside of them. Now they have a lot of stuff in this restaurant and honestly, we spend six to seven hours on site and we can't even get to everything. So we always make it a habit to open the ice machines up, give them a quick wipe down, and just evaluate them in June and December while they canceled the December PMS So here's your sign, right? But regardless, I mean it is what it is. You know I understand business has to stay profitable and they got to do whatever they got to do to make the shareholders happy and you know all that good stuff.

So, but regardless, I'm going off on a tangent as I usually do right? So back to the machine understanding or having a basic understanding of how the Machine Works is a very, very important thing. Okay, the next thing is you have to eliminate possibilities of things that could be part of your problem. Uh, that water line is a possibility that's been bugging me for a while. To the customer's defense though, this ice machine is I don't know.

eight years old and it's had that water line for eight years and it's only had I can actually remember off the top of my hand. three I think three freeze-ups on this particular machine. maybe four at the most and part of it actually in the past was a bin switch. We had a bin switch problem on this machine so I want to change it because it's not right.

but I mean it's been working fine and that's one of the weird things you know? Yeah, Hoshizaki has recommendations for water line sizes and another thing I want to say too when I When I mentioned in the video that it needs to have a minimum half inch inside diameter, the line size doesn't matter if you don't have water pressure and water flow. Okay, so really, the GPM of water, the gallons per minute of water delivered to this machine is what's important. Okay, but the gallons permitted of water being delivered into the machine can be hindered by too small of a water line. By you know, a couple different variables.

So it's just a rule of thumb to say that you need a minimum of a half inch water line coming to the machine. But I mean you could have a half inch water line but have no water pressure so you can't just go off of the fact that the water line size was incorrect. But in this situation, um, you know. Uh I think it's okay.

You know I want to change the water line, but it's been working so then we kind of work through the process of elimination. The next thing is the machine needs to be cleaned. Okay if it's not clean, if you have sediment buildup and and issues, that's going to cause a problem. A really, really big red flag was that that breather port on the water flow.

Now that breather Port is there to relieve pressure because what can happen every once in a while that water flow can actually get like a I don't know what the term is I mean I This probably isn't the right way to say it, but it I don't even know how to explain it, but you can. You can actually create like a a a suction or something inside that that water float where because the breather tube isn't letting air come in, it just won't sense the water level correctly and that can become come a problem. But then on top of that once I opened that up and saw that there was a bunch of sediment and mud in the bottom. Yeah, that can definitely be part of the problem too.

So we went ahead and cleaned the machine, went through the operations I adjusted the defrost. Essentially, we can call it a defrost termination, but it's a defrost timer so you know after it goes through its normal sequence of operation. part of the sequence of operation is once. uh, you know the I'll have to refresh my memory on the book, but it looks at water level it looks at.

um uh. also the thermistor temperature. That's right, I think it looks at the thermistor temperature first and then I think it bases the rest of the time off of the water float if I Remember right on the Hoshizakis. So anyways, that's what the manuals are for.

so that way you can go to the manual and read it and kind of brush up on it. But common cinch just tells you the machine needs to be clean. So cleaned it up, explained everything to the customer and just told them to keep an eye on it. Okay, so that's that.

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