How much do you pay for water filters and filter maintenance each year, to keep yourself in the ice? Depending on your consumption, I'll assure you that you are spending anywhere from $160.00 per year on a 300 pound per day production machine, up to $585.00 per year on a 1200 pound per day production ice cube machine.

This doesn't include your down time, ice purchases, and service costs when you run out of ice when the water filters expire -on the weekend! After the warranty period expires on your ice machine - You've already spent enough in filters and maintenance to buy another MACHINE, for crying out loud!

Is this alarming to you? Do you want to know what's worse?

If you are maintaining a typical 1/2-micron water filtration system that most manufacturers and installers provide, recommend, or even require on their machines, you are really not acheiving much in product quality for the cost of the 1/2-micron membrane, which usually is the cause of the machine shutting down and leaving you without ice - even though the machine is functioning properly, itself.

"But the ice machine works so much better now, since the water filters were installed.", you might say.

Well, along with that useless 1/2-micron membrane in the water filter cartridge are food grade phosphate (to keep the minerals from sticking to the machine surfaces), and carbon (to remove taste and odor). Now these other materials in the filter cartridge are useful - assuming that you need it in the first place! But the membrane itself serves no purpose for the quality of ice produced by cube ice machine, but only to require the need for you to buy more when the membrane is expended.

You see, making ice cubes is somewhat of a distillation process, itself. The pure water freezes and concentrates the dissolved minerals in the remaining water at the end of the ice making cycle, EVEN after having passed throught the 1/2-micron membrane, mind you!

Have you ever heard the term "dump cycle" relating to the operation of your machine? I'll bet you have. 20% of all that 1/2-micron filtered water is going down the drain with the concentrated dissolved solids that the membrane does not remove! ... and do you know what? The water utility charges you more for your wastewater, than is charged for getting the water to you. Every ice machine has a dump / waste water cycle.

Unless you have some special water conditions like Giardia Cyst or other biological contaminants in your water that are usually only found in third-world nations, or maybe high turbidity from a particular water supply or supplier, sub-micron filtration is a waste of money. If you are a tree-hugger, it is not very enviromentally friendly but it sure means green in the pockets of the filter manufacturers.

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for these water treatment systems in applications such as coffee brewers and post-mix soda pop, auger-driven ice makers (Follett chewblet or any flaked or nugget ice machine) or even your cubed ice machine in instances that are described above. That's where the sub-micron filtration application belongs, in systems where water is directly transformed into the end product or really bad water supplies. Otherwise, a cubed ice machine physically purifies water through the freezing process and as such the water is refined during the making of the ice.

Of course, some ice cube machines do a better job of purification than others. That's why I recommend KOLD-DRAFT ice machines. They work on water that other machines will not function on, even without water treatment in most instances. Even the KOLD-DRAFT Factory will tell you - "DON'T BUY FILTERS!!"

While those other guys are amending their warranties to sell their own name brand water filter systems for hundreds of dollars in up front costs!

(If you don't believe me, call KOLD-DRAFT now, at 814-453-6761, 8:00a - 5:00p ET)

If you have a 1/2-micron filtration system serving your cubed ice machine, you can save plenty of money by only employing a coarse filter (no finer than 50-microns), and phosphate feeder, to keep the minerals from sticking to your machine surfaces. If you have taste or odor in your water, you could employ a carbon block to address that issue. Even if you are using one of the less efficient brands of machines, the sub-micron filtration is only making your pocket thinner.

Here is a brochure which documents my research on this issue:

DON'T GET TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS!