Tuesday, July 28, 2009


Your Shaved Ice Machine Freezes Up…What Do You Do?



It’s 95 degrees outside, you are at an event and there is a nice, healthy line of people waiting to give you $3.00 each for a 16 ounce cup of shaved ice. You are working as hard and as fast as possible. Business is great and you have been pumping out cups of shaved ice non-stop for the last 30 minutes. You turn the machine off to refill the hopper or place another ice block inside of the machine. You flip the switch on and nothing happens. You hear a humming sound coming from the motor. What do you do? Do you keep switching the machine off and on? NO! STOP! Turn the machine off immediately!

What has happened is a typical machine clog. It is going to happen…it’s a “nature of the beast.” While you have been shaving ice all that time, ice has been building up inside the machine. The ice has almost completely frozen the metal and finally it all came to a breaking point. When the machine stopped for that split second, all that fine fluffy ice inside the machine caused the moving parts to freeze together. This is known as a machine freeze up. It happens to all the shaved ice and snow cone machines; both cube ice and block machines.

To solve this problem, first make sure the machine is turned off as soon as possible. You don’t want you motor to sit and hum for long periods of time because by doing so you may easily burn up the motor. Now find a 12 or 16 ounce cup of water and slowly drizzle the water inside the hopper to break up and release the ice. It may take a cup or two of water to loosen up the ice. After one cup, try switching the machine on to see if it is still clogged. If so, repeat the process.

A counter mounted spray nozzle also works great in this situation. Simply spray a few squirts into the ice hopper and you are back in business in no time.

Learn more tips and tricks for efficiently operating your shaved ice or snow cone business by requesting a FREE copy of Cold Cash, the free business manual offered at 1-800-Shaved-Ice.com.

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