The ice machine works perfectly through the winter and starts falling behind around the second week of July. By August the bin never fills. Come October it is fine again and everybody forgets until next year.
Refrigeration needs somewhere to put the heat
An ice machine makes cold by moving heat somewhere else, and that somewhere has to be able to take it. Rejecting heat needs a temperature difference and it needs air moving across a condenser. A unit built into a stone surround with two inches of clearance has neither, and in a Florida August the air it is trying to reject into is already at 95 degrees.
So the machine is not broken. It is doing exactly what physics allows in the space it was given.
The order in which it is examined
- Clearance, and whether air can move at all. Front-breathing units need their grille genuinely clear. Anything drawing from the sides needs real gaps, not decorative ones.
- Condenser cleaning. Outdoors that means insects and pollen as well as dust, and twice a year is the minimum here.
- Water filter. A restricted fill gives you small or hollow cubes long before it gives you none.
- Scale in the reservoir and drain line. Florida water plus summer heat is the fastest-scaling combination we deal with.
- The harvest circuit. Mould heater and thermostat. Both replaceable, neither expensive.
The change worth making
If the machine is boxed in, open it up. A louvre in the surround, a gap behind, a position out of the afternoon sun, any of it does more for reliability than any part we can fit. We would rather tell you that once than sell you a compressor every second summer.
Cleaning is part of what we do on these rather than a separate line on the bill. Call (561) 276-4169.
