Ice machine repairs Subiaco venues can book direct
Sam Celesti repairs commercial ice machines for Subiaco pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants and juice shops, about 4 km from the Perth CBD. He holds ARCtick licence AU55592, brings more than 20 years of commercial refrigeration work and is the one technician who comes out. You know the price in writing before he begins.
An ice machine is only as good as the water going into it. In Subiaco that turns out to matter more than usual.
Water supply, filters and older plumbing
The local angle here is water. Many Subiaco venues trade out of buildings that have been renovated several times over the decades, and the plumbing behind the bar is often a patchwork of old and new pipe. Ice machines are fussy about what comes through that pipe. They need steady pressure, clean water and a decent flow every time the inlet valve opens.
Older plumbing can let all three slip. Pressure drops when a kitchen tap or glass washer opens on the same line, so the machine underfills its trough and makes thin, incomplete cubes. Sediment loosened by works elsewhere in the building collects in the inlet screen and the filter cartridge, and the machine starts flagging water faults or making ice painfully slowly. Minerals dissolved in the water settle as scale on the evaporator plate, the water distribution tube and the float, and every cycle takes a little longer.
Sam starts with the water supply before blaming the machine. He checks the pressure at the tap, the inlet valve, the screen and the filter, then looks at how much scale has built up inside. Often the fix is a new filter cartridge, a cleaned inlet screen and a full descale. Where there is no filter at all, he will recommend fitting one, because it protects the machine and keeps the ice tasting clean.
A water filter is a consumable, not a fixture. A cartridge left in place long past its service life can restrict flow badly enough to stop the machine making ice.
The venues that rely on ice here
- Pubs on Hay Street, including the Subiaco Hotel corner: large cube machines behind the bar, worked hardest on weekend afternoons and nights.
- Bars around the Regal Theatre: pre-show and interval service, where the whole crowd wants a drink in the same twenty minutes.
- Rokeby Road cafés and juice bars: undercounter machines for iced coffee, smoothies and cold drinks through the warmer months.
- Restaurants with seafood on the menu: ice for oysters, raw bars and chilled platters, where ice quality is on show.
Apart from water faults, Sam sees the usual run of ice machine problems here: harvest faults where the cubes refuse to drop, leaking or overflowing bins, condensers clogged with kitchen dust, and slime in machines that have gone too long between cleans. Ice touching drinks is a food, so the bin, the water trough and every part the ice touches need regular sanitising as well as repair.
While you wait
- Turn off the water if it is leaking. The isolating tap is usually behind or beside the machine.
- Check whether other taps are running weak. If the kitchen tap is also low on pressure, mention it, as it points to a supply problem.
- Use bagged ice for service. Do not serve ice from a machine that is producing cloudy, smelly or discoloured cubes.
Then ring Sam and describe what you see. The phone assessment is free.
Booking an ice machine repair
Sam services Manitowoc machines among other commercial ice makers, 7 days a week, with breakdowns put first. For more detail, visit ice machine repairs Perth. If the cool room behind the bar is also giving trouble, see cool room repairs Subiaco, and if a leak has left a machine short of refrigerant, Sam also handles refrigeration regas once the leak is repaired.
