Refurbished Commercial Ice Machines

Start from the peak day rather than the average, and remember that the figure on a machine is a daily production rate under test conditions, not a promise about your bar on a hot Saturday. Production drops as the room and the water get warmer, which is exactly when demand peaks.

Then look at storage separately. A machine that produces steadily overnight into a big bin can serve a bar that would overwhelm its hourly production. That is the argument for a modular machine on a bin: you size production and storage to two different questions.

Full cube for spirits and general bar work, because it melts slowly and looks right in a glass. Half cube for volume soft drink and takeaway cups, since it packs and chills faster. Flake ice for seafood and produce display, because it packs around product without bruising it. Nugget ice where people chew it, which is why healthcare and fast food use it.

You cannot change it later, so get it right before you buy. A machine makes the shape it makes, and no amount of adjustment changes it. If the venue needs two shapes, that is two machines or a machine plus an ice crusher.

Air cooled machines push their heat into the room, which makes them simpler to install but means they need genuine clearance and they warm the space around them. In a small, hot bar back area, that becomes a problem for the machine and for everything else in there.

Water cooled machines put the heat into the water supply, so they hold output better in a hot room, but they need plumbing and use water continuously. The product page says which a unit is. If the only space available is a hot cupboard, the answer is probably neither — it is a remote condenser arrangement, which is worth asking us about.

Water quality affects how long the machine lasts and how the ice looks more than anything else does. Scale builds on the evaporator and in the water circuit, and cloudy or soft ice is often a water problem rather than a machine fault. Filtration is standard practice, not an upgrade.

Ask about the water where a refurbished machine last worked and whether it ran behind a filter, because a machine from a hard-water area without one has aged faster than its hours suggest. Then fit a filter where the machine is going and change the cartridge on schedule.

The evaporator, the water circuit and the pump, because those are where scale does its damage, and the condenser for the usual dust and grease. Then the bin, the door and the scoop holder, and the drain, since an ice machine makes water as well as ice.

Then run it through a full cycle if you can and look at the ice it makes. Misshapen, hollow or cloudy cubes point at water or at the harvest cycle. Ask us what was replaced during the refurbishment rather than what was looked at, and check parts for the model are still available.

Nearly always. A small self-contained countertop machine working off an internal reservoir can be the exception, but anything in this range needs a water supply in and a drain out, and the drain is the part that gets forgotten. Melt water and purge water have to go somewhere, and a machine positioned where a gravity drain is impossible becomes a pump-and-pray arrangement.

Sort the water point and the floor waste before the machine is positioned. The product page lists the connections a unit needs, and if the location is awkward, tell us before you order rather than on delivery day.

Often yes, and it is a sensible route for a machine that is this critical and this easy to mis-size. Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy lets you rent the unit rather than buy it outright, so the payments are an operating expense and the cash stays in stock.

First-time operators very commonly undersize their ice machine, because nobody believes how much ice a busy bar gets through until the first hot weekend. Renting makes that fixable. Ask us which units in stock can be put on a rental.