Commercial ice machine field guide: installation and service

What a commercial ice machine is, and why the water side makes or breaks it

A commercial ice machine is a refrigeration system that freezes potable water into cube, nugget, or flake ice for food service, healthcare, and industry. It runs the same vapor-compression cycle as any cooler or walk-in: a compressor, a condenser, a metering device, and an evaporator move heat out of the water until it freezes. The refrigeration-cycle guide covers how that loop works, and nothing about that physics changes here.

What changes is where the work actually lives. On a cooler, the box and the refrigerant decide success. On an ice machine, the refrigeration is the part that rarely fails first. The water side is what makes or breaks it: the supply, the filtration that fights scale, a drain that is plumbed with an air gap, and the cleaning that keeps mold and slime out of the ice. Most ice-machine service calls and almost every health-code violation trace back to water and sanitation, not the compressor.

So the job is plain. Install the water, the drain, the condenser, and the clearances right, then hold the cleaning schedule. Get those and a decent machine runs for years. Skip them and the best compressor in the catalog still scales up, slimes over, or starves for ice. This guide treats the machine as a system, separate from walk-in refrigeration, and cross-links the cycle and commercial-refrigeration guides so the shared basics live there.

The one truth: water and sanitation, not the compressor

If you remember one thing about ice machines, remember that the water side is the job. Scale from hard water is the number one killer. It insulates the evaporator so the machine freezes slower and makes thin or cloudy ice, it fouls the float and the water distribution, and left long enough it ruins the parts it cakes onto. Right behind it is sanitation, because mold and the pink and gray slime of biofilm grow inside a warm, wet, dark ice machine and end up in the ice, which is food.

Techs who chase ice-machine callbacks see the same pattern. The compressor and the sealed system are usually fine. The water is not filtered, so the machine scaled up. The drain backed up or was never air-gapped. Nobody cleaned it, so it grew a biofilm. It was sized to the rated number and starves in a hot kitchen. Or it sits in a corner with no air and overheats.

Treat the refrigeration as the part that mostly takes care of itself and put the attention where the failures are. Filter the water, air-gap the drain, size for the real room, and clean on a schedule. That is the difference between a machine that lasts and a string of service tickets.

Cube, nugget, and flake: matching the ice to the use

Ice machines come in three families, and the type drives the choice more than the brand does. Cube ice is the standard for drinks. It is hard, clear, slow to melt, and slow to dilute, which is why bars and restaurants want it. Nugget ice, the soft chewable kind people call Sonic or pellet ice, is made by compressing flake into pellets. It chews easily, cools fast, and shows up in fast food, convenience stores, and healthcare. Flake ice is soft, moldable, and made of thin shaved layers. It packs around product, so it goes into seafood and produce displays and into medical and lab use.

The split also maps to how the machine works. Cube machines are batch machines: they freeze a slab or a grid, then harvest it in cycles. Nugget and flake machines run continuously, scraping ice off a chilled cylinder or auger without a separate harvest. That continuous design is gentler on the water and tends to use less energy per pound, but the ice melts faster and is not what you want floating in a cocktail.

Pick the ice for the application first, then size and configure around it. Confirm the cube size and ice form against the manufacturer data, since cube formats vary by maker.

Modular, self-contained, and remote: the form factors

Three physical configurations cover most installs. A modular machine is an ice-making head that sits on top of a separate storage bin or a dispenser. This is the high-volume setup, because you match a head to whatever bin capacity the operation needs and service the two separately. A self-contained or undercounter machine builds the maker and the bin into one cabinet that slides under a counter. It makes less ice and stores less, which suits a small bar, a coffee shop, or an office.

The third axis is where the heat goes, and that is the remote configuration. A remote machine keeps the ice-making head and bin inside but mounts the condenser outside or on the roof, connected by a refrigerant line set. It pulls the rejected heat and most of the noise out of the room, at the cost of a line-set run and a more involved install.

Match the form to the volume and the space. A busy kitchen with a big draw wants a modular head on a large bin or a dispenser. A tight back bar wants undercounter. A hot, enclosed room that cannot shed the heat or the noise is where a remote condenser earns its extra cost. Confirm head-to-bin compatibility against the manufacturer, since not every head fits every bin top.

Air-cooled vs water-cooled vs remote: which condenser?

An ice machine has to reject the heat it pulls out of the water, and how it does that is one of the biggest install decisions. Air-cooled is the default and roughly seven of ten machines sold. It blows air across the condenser, costs the least to run since it uses no extra water, and installs easily. The trade is that it needs real clearance and decent ambient air, and it dumps warm air and noise back into the room.

Water-cooled runs condenser water through the machine and sends the heat down the drain. It does not care how hot the room is, runs quieter, and holds production in a kitchen that cooks an air-cooled unit. The catch is the water bill, because it uses a lot of water continuously, and some jurisdictions restrict or ban single-pass water-cooled ice machines for that reason. Confirm what local code allows before you spec one.

Remote splits the difference for hard rooms. The condenser goes outside or on the roof, so the heat and noise leave the space and production stays stable, at the cost of a refrigerant line set and a higher install price. The general lean: air-cooled unless the room is hot or tight, remote when you need the heat gone, and water-cooled only where local code permits it and the room genuinely defeats air. Size and apply each to the manufacturer data.

The freeze and harvest cycle

What sets a cube machine apart from straight refrigeration is the harvest. A cooler runs the cycle to hold a temperature. An ice machine has to make solid ice and then let it go, so a batch cuber runs two phases. In the freeze phase, water pumps or runs over a chilled evaporator and a layer of ice builds, commonly over ten to twenty minutes depending on the machine and the conditions. Once the ice reaches thickness, the machine switches to harvest.

Harvest is the clever part. The machine sends hot refrigerant gas through the evaporator, or energizes electric warmers, just enough to thaw the bond between the ice and the plate. The ice slab loosens and slides off into the bin below, a water curtain or a switch tells the control the harvest happened, and the cycle restarts. Nugget and flake machines skip the discrete harvest and scrape ice off continuously instead.

Reading the cycle is how you diagnose a cuber. A harvest that drags out or never releases points at scale on the plate, a weak hot-gas valve, or a water problem, not usually a dead compressor. Watch the freeze time and the harvest time against the manufacturer spec and the machine tells you where it hurts.

The water supply: line, pressure, and shutoff

The supply is the first thing to get right, because everything downstream depends on it. Run a dedicated potable cold-water line to the machine with its own shutoff valve at the unit, so it can be isolated for service without killing water to the rest of the kitchen. Do not tee the ice machine off a busy branch that drops pressure every time someone opens a faucet, because a starved machine makes thin ice and short cycles.

Pressure has a working window. Many machines want roughly 20 psi minimum to 80 psi maximum, and some AHRI-rated units are tested across about 10 to 70 psi. Below the minimum the fill is slow and the ice suffers. Above the maximum you can damage valves and float assemblies. Confirm the exact range on the machine's data plate or spec sheet, and add a pressure-reducing valve on high municipal pressure or a booster pump where pressure is low.

Use the line size the manufacturer calls for, keep the run clean and supported, and install a shutoff a tech can actually reach. The supply quality matters as much as the pressure, which is the next two sections.

Water filtration: scale is the number one enemy

Filtration is the single best investment on an ice machine, because scale from hard water is what kills these machines. Calcium and magnesium in the water come out of solution as the water is chilled and cycled, and they plate out as hard, chalky scale on the evaporator, the float, and the water lines. Scale insulates the freezing surface so the machine works harder and makes thinner, cloudier ice, fouls the controls, and eventually seizes the parts it cakes onto.

An inline filter cartridge sized for the machine does two jobs. It strains sediment and improves taste and clarity by cutting chlorine and particulate, and a cartridge with a scale inhibitor, often a polyphosphate, keeps the hardness minerals in suspension so they rinse out instead of plating on the plate. Match the filter to the machine's flow and to the water, and change the cartridge on schedule, because a clogged filter starves the machine the same way low pressure does.

Where the water is genuinely bad, high hardness, high total dissolved solids, or problem minerals, a standard cartridge is not enough and reverse osmosis or a softener feeding the machine is the right call. Filtration reduces scale and slows it down. It does not replace descaling. You still clean the machine on schedule. Size and select the treatment against the manufacturer guidance and a water test.

Water quality: hardness, TDS, and chlorine

Test the water before you blame the machine, because water quality decides both ice clarity and how fast the machine fouls. Hardness, measured in grains per gallon, is the scale driver. As a working line, sanitation and descale frequency get pushed up hard once hardness climbs, and many sources tighten the cleaning interval to monthly above roughly 12 grains per gallon or on well water. Total dissolved solids affect clarity and taste, and high TDS leaves cloudy, mineral-tasting ice that melts fast.

Chlorine and chloramine from municipal water hurt taste and, at high levels, can attack some components over time, which is part of why a carbon filter stage is standard. Cloudy or soft, fast-melting ice and a machine that scales quickly are the field symptoms of bad water, and they get misread as a refrigeration problem more often than they should.

Pull a water test, read hardness, TDS, and chlorine, then size filtration and set the cleaning interval to the water you actually have, not a default. The interval and treatment are best confirmed against the manufacturer and the water report.

Do ice machines need an air gap drain?

Yes. An ice machine drain has to discharge through an air gap, and this is the install detail inspectors check and crews still get wrong. The bin and machine drains are indirect waste: they run to a floor sink or floor drain with a clear vertical space between the end of the drain pipe and the flood rim of the receiver. Nothing connects the drain line directly to the sanitary system. That open vertical gap is the only thing between sewer water and the ice, and the ice is food.

The plumbing codes that govern this, the IPC and UPC, require an air gap on equipment that stores or makes ice, and a common figure for the gap is at least 1 inch, or twice the diameter of the drain outlet, with the larger of the two controlling. A hard-piped or trapped-and-tied drain fails inspection and risks back-siphoning contaminated water into the bin if the drain ever backs up.

Build the drain right and the rest follows. Slope it so it runs by gravity with no low spots, insulate the bin drain so it does not sweat and drip, keep it short, and never let it become a direct connection. The bin has its own drain separate from the maker, and both follow the same air-gap rule. Verify the gap dimension and routing against the adopted plumbing code and local amendments.

Electrical: dedicated circuit, voltage, and GFCI

Put the machine on its own dedicated circuit. Most ice machines under about 800 lbs per day run on 115 V and want a dedicated 20 A circuit, while larger machines move up to 208/230 V and sometimes higher, occasionally on a 30 A circuit or a multi-wire setup. Sharing the circuit with other kitchen equipment is how you get nuisance trips and a machine that quits during a rush. Confirm the voltage, amperage, and breaker size on the data plate.

GFCI is a real question, not a formality. The NEC requires GFCI protection for many 125 V, 15 and 20 A receptacles in commercial kitchens, but whether a given ice machine receptacle falls under it depends on the location and the adopted code edition. The practical trap is nuisance tripping: some ice machines trip a standard GFCI when the compressor starts, which leaves a business without ice until someone resets it. Where GFCI is required, plan for a device and wiring that hold up to the inrush.

Size the circuit to the nameplate, verify the supply voltage under load, and resolve the GFCI question against the adopted NEC edition and the AHJ rather than guessing. The code edition the jurisdiction adopted and its local amendments control.

The refrigerant side and the A2L transition

The sealed refrigeration system in a self-contained or modular ice machine is usually just that, sealed and factory-charged, and it tends to be the most reliable part of the machine. You charge, recover, and diagnose it the same way as any small system, by superheat and subcooling, and the refrigerant-cycle and commercial-refrigeration guides cover that method. A remote machine has a field-installed line set, so it gets charged and leak-checked like any split system at startup.

The refrigerant itself is changing. The phasedown of high-GWP HFCs is pushing new ice machines onto lower-GWP A2L refrigerants such as R-454C and R-290 propane on smaller units, and the A2L and A3 refrigerants are mildly to fully flammable, which changes charge limits, service practice, and the leak detection and ventilation the equipment carries. The commercial-refrigeration guide covers the transition in depth; treat any new machine as potentially A2L and read the data plate before you open the system.

On the sealed side, the rule is restraint. Most ice-machine no-ice and thin-ice calls are water, scale, drain, or condenser problems, not a low charge. Rule out the water side and the condenser before you put gauges on a sealed system, because a sealed system rarely loses charge on its own, and the refrigerant work should follow the manufacturer and EPA rules.

How is a commercial ice machine sized?

Size to demand on two numbers, not one: the daily production in pounds per day and the bin storage in pounds. Production is how much the head can make in 24 hours. Storage is how much sits ready for the lunch or dinner peak when draw outruns production. A machine that makes plenty over a day can still run dry at noon if the bin is too small to bank ice for the rush.

Estimate the daily need from the application, then add headroom. Common planning figures run around 1.5 lbs of ice per restaurant guest, near 3 lbs per seat at a cocktail bar, roughly 10 lbs per patient bed per day in healthcare, and about 5 lbs per hotel room. These are starting points, not gospel. A common rule is to pick a head that makes about 20 percent more than the estimated daily need and a bin that holds 10 to 20 percent more than a day's production, with less margin once you are over 1,000 lbs per day.

Then comes the part that wrecks more sizing jobs than anything else: the rated number is not the real number. Production is published at ideal conditions and falls in a hot room with warm water. Size on the derated output, covered next, against the manufacturer capacity chart for the actual conditions.

Production derate: the rated lbs are not the real lbs

The certified AHRI Standard rating is taken at 90°F air and 70°F water, a deliberately realistic condition, while the larger headline number some makers print is the AHRI Maximum rating at about 70°F air and 50°F water that you will almost never see in a working kitchen. Both ambient air and incoming water temperature cut production, and a few degrees lengthen the harvest cycle. Put the same machine in a 90°F kitchen with 70°F supply water and production can fall 15 percent or more below the rating.

This is the most common sizing miss in the trade. Someone reads the headline number, buys to it, and the machine runs short every afternoon in a hot back room with warm city water in summer. The machine is not broken. It was sized to a lab number it cannot hit in that room. Manufacturers publish capacity charts that show output across air and water temperatures for exactly this reason.

Size to the derated output for the real room. Find the machine's production at the actual ambient air and water temperature on the manufacturer's capacity chart, then apply your headroom on top of that figure, not on the headline rating. When in doubt, size up. A machine that loafs in winter and keeps up in August beats one that runs flat out and still falls behind.

Location, ambient, and clearances

Where the machine sits decides whether an air-cooled unit can breathe, and a bad location turns a healthy machine into a short-ice complaint. Do not bury an air-cooled machine in a hot, enclosed corner next to the fryers and the oven. It pulls room air across the condenser, so the hotter and more crowded the space, the worse it makes ice, and a machine that overheats can shut down on a high-pressure trip.

Air-cooled machines need clearance for intake and discharge, commonly on the order of 6 inches around the air openings, with the exact dimension set by the manufacturer. Block the airflow or let the warm discharge recirculate and you have throttled the machine even though nothing is wrong with it. Give the unit cool, moving air, room to pull and push it, and access to open the panels for service. A level floor matters too, since cubers depend on water sheeting evenly over the plate and an out-of-level machine makes uneven ice.

When the only spot is hot or tight, that is the case for water-cooled where code allows or a remote condenser, rather than forcing an air-cooled unit into a room that will starve it. Confirm the clearance and ambient limits against the manufacturer install manual.

Cleaning and sanitizing: mold, slime, and biofilm

Ice machines grow mold and slime, full stop. The inside of a machine is wet, dark, around room temperature in spots, and fed a steady supply of airborne yeast and bacteria, which is an ideal place for mold and the pink or gray slime of biofilm to take hold. That growth ends up in the ice, and since ice is a food, it is a health-code problem and a contamination risk, not a cosmetic one.

Cleaning is two separate jobs that people confuse. Descaling uses an acid cleaner to dissolve the mineral scale off the water side and the evaporator. Sanitizing uses a different chemical to kill the mold and biofilm on the surfaces the ice touches. You do both, in order, with the maker's recommended solutions, and you physically scrub, because biofilm is protected and ordinary rinsing does not remove it. A surface wipe leaves the biofilm and it grows back within days.

Frequency tracks the water and the use. A common baseline is a full clean and sanitize at least quarterly, tightened to monthly on hard water above roughly 12 grains per gallon or on well water. Some operators add UV or ozone systems to slow growth between cleanings, but those supplement the scheduled cleaning rather than replacing it. Follow the manufacturer's procedure and chemicals and your local food code for frequency.

The bin, the dispenser, and the scoop

The storage bin and dispenser are food-contact surfaces, and they get treated like an afterthought far too often. Ice in the bin is finished food sitting in storage, so the bin gets cleaned and sanitized on the same schedule as the maker, the door or lid stays closed to keep airborne contamination out, and the drain stays clear so meltwater leaves instead of pooling and breeding growth.

Handling is where the health inspector finds problems fast. The scoop lives in a holder outside the ice, never buried in the bin where the handle touches the ice. Hands and glasses never scoop ice, and a glass used as a scoop is both a contamination route and a broken-glass hazard in the bin. A dispenser cuts the handling risk because nobody reaches in, but the dispenser chute and nozzle still need cleaning, since that is where slime hides.

Train the staff on the scoop and the closed lid, because the cleanest machine in the building still fails an inspection if the crew scoops with a cup. The bin is part of the system, not a box the ice falls into.

NSF, ANSI, and the food code

Specify equipment that carries the right listing and the inspector starts on your side. NSF/ANSI 12 is the standard for automatic ice-making equipment. It sets the food-protection and sanitation requirements for the materials, design, and construction of ice machines so the surfaces are cleanable and the ice stays safe. A machine listed to NSF/ANSI 12 is built to be cleaned, which is half the sanitation battle.

Operation falls under the local food code, which most jurisdictions base on the FDA Food Code. The food code treats ice as food, requires ice-contact equipment to be cleaned and maintained, and is what the health inspector enforces on the cleaning schedule, the air-gap drain, and ice handling. The plumbing side, the air gap and backflow protection, comes from the adopted plumbing code, the IPC or UPC.

Spec NSF-listed equipment, install to the plumbing code, and operate to the food code. The sanitation frequency, the water treatment, and the install details should be confirmed against the manufacturer, NSF/ANSI 12, and the adopted local code and food code, since the AHJ has the final word on what passes.

The install: level, water, drain, clearance, startup

A good install is a sequence, and skipping a step shows up weeks later. Set the head on the bin or stand and get it level, because a cuber sheets water across the plate and an out-of-level machine makes uneven ice and can spill water. Run the dedicated water line with its shutoff and the filter ahead of the machine. Plumb the maker and bin drains as indirect waste to a floor sink with the air gap, sloped, insulated, and never hard-connected.

Give an air-cooled unit its clearance and confirm the room can supply cool air and shed the discharge. Land the dedicated electrical circuit at the right voltage and resolve the GFCI question for the location. Then start it up by the manufacturer's procedure: purge and flush the water line before the first ice, check the freeze and harvest times against the spec, confirm the float and water level, and verify the drain runs clean.

Then do the first cleaning. A new machine should get a sanitize before it serves ice, because the install handling and the dead time before commissioning give growth a head start. The first batch of ice gets dumped, not served. Hand the operator the cleaning schedule and the filter-change date as part of the handoff.

Common service calls and how to read them

Most ice-machine calls are a short list, and the water side leads it. Walk the machine before you reach for gauges, because the symptom usually points straight at the cause.

No ice or low ice is most often water or air, not refrigerant. Check the supply shutoff, the filter, and the water pressure first, then the condenser. A dirty air-cooled condenser, choked with grease and dust, makes the machine overheat and trip or cut production, and it is one of the most common and most missed causes. Thin, cloudy, or slow ice points at scale on the evaporator or a fouled water side. A harvest that hangs or never drops the slab means scale on the plate, a weak hot-gas valve, or a water-curtain or float problem.

Slime, mold, or off-tasting ice is a cleaning problem, not a mechanical one, and the fix is a full descale and sanitize plus correcting whatever lets it grow back, usually no filter or a clogged one. Water leaks and overflow trace to the float, the inlet valve, or a plugged drain. Only after the water, the drain, and the condenser come up clean do you suspect the sealed system, because a sealed system rarely loses charge on its own. Diagnose freeze and harvest times against the manufacturer service data.

The maintenance schedule that keeps it alive

Ice machines reward a calendar and punish neglect. The lifecycle is a handful of recurring tasks, and the operation that does them sees a machine last for years while the one that does not buys a new machine early and fails inspections in between.

Clean and sanitize on schedule, descale on schedule, change the water filter on its interval, and keep the condenser clean. On an air-cooled unit, pull and wash or vacuum the condenser filter and coil regularly, because a grease-caked coil is a slow strangle that ends as a high-pressure trip on a hot day. Check the water side, the float, the lines, and the drain, when you are in there. Tie the dates to the water hardness, since hard water shortens the descale and cleaning intervals.

Put it on paper or in a system so it does not depend on memory. The frequencies are best set against the manufacturer's maintenance schedule and your local food code, then tightened for the water you have.

Ice is food: the stakes

The reason all of this matters is that ice is a food, and the health code treats it that way. It goes straight into drinks and onto product with no cooking step to kill anything it picked up, so a contaminated machine puts contaminated ice directly in front of a customer. Ice has been the source of real outbreaks and recalls, and a machine full of mold or slime is a failed inspection and a liability, not a maintenance footnote.

That framing changes how you treat the work. The air-gap drain is not red tape, it is the barrier between sewage and the ice. The cleaning schedule is not optional, it is what keeps biofilm out of food. Filtered water is not just for clear cubes, it keeps the machine cleanable. Every water-side decision is a food-safety decision wearing a maintenance label.

Handle it accordingly and document it. The operator who can show a cleaning log and a filter-change record is in a far better spot when the inspector or a complaint shows up.

What to document

An ice machine that nobody keeps records on is a machine you cannot defend at inspection and cannot service efficiently. The record answers the questions that come up later: when was it last cleaned, what is the water like, when is the filter due, and what was the install sized for. A field tool like FieldOS keeps the machine, the water test, the filter dates, and the cleaning and sanitation log in one place so the schedule does not live in someone's head.

Capture the machine model and serial, the ice type and configuration, the condenser type, the rated and derated production for the actual conditions, the bin capacity, the water test results, the filter type and change date, the drain and air-gap detail, the electrical circuit, and the cleaning and sanitizing log with dates. If the install was sized to a derate, write down the assumed air and water temperatures, because the next person will wonder why the machine is the size it is.

Common mistakes

• Running no or poor water filtration, so scale plates the evaporator and ruins the machine.
• Plumbing the drain without an air gap, which fails inspection and risks back-siphonage into the ice.
• Sizing to the rated pounds per day and ignoring the derate for hot air and warm water.
• Putting an air-cooled machine in a hot or tight location that starves it for air.
• Running no cleaning schedule, so mold and biofilm slime grow in the ice machine.
• Ignoring water quality instead of testing hardness, TDS, and chlorine and treating to it.

Field checklist

Standards and references

Start with the manufacturer. The install manual and the service and capacity data control the clearances, the water and pressure range, the electrical, the derated production, and the cleaning chemicals and frequency for a given machine, and they override any rule of thumb in this guide.

Performance and listing come from a few bodies. AHRI 810 is the performance-rating standard for automatic commercial ice-makers; its certified Standard rating is taken at 90°F air and 70°F water, a realistic condition, with a separate Maximum rating at milder conditions. NSF/ANSI 12 is the food-protection and sanitation standard for ice-making equipment, and specifying NSF-listed equipment is what the health inspector looks for.

Sanitation and handling are enforced under the local food code, most often based on the FDA Food Code, which treats ice as food. The drain air gap and backflow protection come from the adopted plumbing code, the IPC or UPC. The electrical falls under the NEC, NFPA 70, including the GFCI rules whose application depends on the location and the adopted edition. Hedge the sizing, the water treatment, and the sanitation frequency to the manufacturer, NSF/ANSI 12, and the food code, and confirm the plumbing and electrical details against the adopted code edition and local amendments. Three things never bend: the water and filtration make or break the machine, air-gap the drain and size for the derate, and clean and sanitize on schedule, because ice is food.

Units and terms

Ice-machine specs span a few units and terms, and the same machine reads differently across a spec sheet, a plumbing detail, and a health report.

Production is in pounds per day (lbs/day); the certified AHRI Standard rating is taken at 90°F air and 70°F water, while the AHRI Maximum rating at about 70°F air and 50°F water is the best-case number. Water hardness is in grains per gallon (gpg), and total dissolved solids (TDS) in parts per million. Supply pressure is in psi, commonly within about 20 to 80 psi. The terms below cover the language the trade uses.

Commercial ice machine

A refrigeration system that freezes potable water into cube, nugget, or flake ice for food service, healthcare, and industry

Cube / nugget / flake

Hard clear ice for drinks; soft chewable pellets for fast food and healthcare; soft shaved layers for display and medical

Modular / self-contained / remote

Head on a separate bin or dispenser; maker and bin in one undercounter cabinet; head inside with the condenser mounted outside

Air vs water-cooled

Air-cooled rejects heat to room air and needs clearance; water-cooled rejects heat to condenser water and uses more water

Harvest cycle

The phase where a cuber warms the evaporator to release the frozen ice into the bin, between freeze cycles

Scale

Hard mineral deposit from calcium and magnesium in hard water, the number one cause of ice-machine failure

Drain air gap

A clear vertical space between the drain outlet and the receiver flood rim, with no direct connection, required by plumbing code

Production derate

The drop in pounds per day from rated ideal conditions to the real higher air and water temperatures of the room

Related tools

Calculators and readiness checks for this work

Compare your options

FAQ

People also ask

• How does the refrigeration cycle work?
• What is commercial refrigeration?
• What does commercial kitchen equipment installation involve?
• What is an access control system?
• How deep should a fence post be?