Ice machine repairs Fremantle businesses can rely on
Sam Celesti repairs commercial ice machines for Fremantle's pubs, breweries, seafood restaurants, fish and chip shops, cafés and market stalls, about 15 km from the Perth CBD. He has worked in commercial refrigeration for over 20 years, holds ARCtick licence AU55592 and carries out every repair personally. You get a fixed quote first, then the work.
Ice in Fremantle has two jobs. It goes into glasses in the pubs and bars, and it goes under and over seafood around the harbour. Both are food, and both put different strain on the machine.
Seafood, wet kitchens and the ice machine
The angle that sets Fremantle apart is seafood. Around the Fishing Boat Harbour, restaurants, fish retailers and takeaway kitchens use ice to chill fresh catch, line display trays and pack fish for customers to carry home. Some use cube ice, some use flake, and many go through more ice on a hot Sunday than a city bar does in a week.
Those kitchens are hard on ice machines. The air is humid and often greasy from fryers, and that grease sticks to the condenser coil and traps dust. A machine with a coated condenser runs hot, makes less ice and eventually trips. Fish prep areas also carry plenty of airborne moisture and organic matter, which is exactly what slime and mould need to get established in the bin and on the water curtain. A machine that smells sour, or ice with a faint fishy taste, is a sign the inside needs a full clean.
Drainage is the other weak point. Ice machines dump meltwater and rinse water every cycle, and in older Fremantle buildings that water often runs into floor wastes that were never designed for it. A slow drain backs water into the bin, ice sits in it and melts, and the floor around the machine stays wet. Sam checks the machine's own drain line, the air gap and the bin drain, and will point out where the building plumbing beyond it is the real culprit.
Pubs, breweries and event days
South Terrace and the streets off it have some of Perth's best-known pubs, including the Sail and Anchor, plus brewery venues down at the harbour. These places work their ice machines hardest on a handful of days each year: long summer weekends, festival days on the Esplanade Reserve and anything that brings the crowds into the West End.
On those days the bin needs to be full before opening and the machine needs to refill it faster than staff can empty it. Scale from the water supply is the usual reason it cannot. As minerals coat the evaporator plate, each freeze takes longer and the cubes get smaller. A clogged water filter makes it worse. Sam descales, replaces the filter cartridge and cleans the condenser, then checks the harvest cycle so the cubes release cleanly.
Book a descale and sanitise in the quiet weeks before summer. A machine cleaned in October is far more likely to keep up on a January long weekend.
If the machine stops before a busy day
- Get backup ice in early. Order bags from an ice supplier as soon as you know the machine is slow, especially before a market or festival weekend.
- Keep the bin lid closed. A propped lid lets warm, salty air in and melts the stock you have left.
- Look underneath. Note whether there is water pooling around the machine or the drain is slow, and mention it when you call. Sam's phone assessment costs nothing.
Booking a repair
Sam services Manitowoc and other commercial ice machines, 7 days a week, with breakdowns put first. Find out more about ice machine repairs across Perth, see cool room repairs in Fremantle for walk-in and freezer room faults, or ask about ongoing maintenance for busy harbour kitchens.
