Ice Filtration Systems

Why should you use a water filter for your ice maker?

Ice is 100% water, and just because it’s frozen doesn’t mean you don’t have to filter it. Water quality is often overlooked in ice production, but it makes all the difference. A slight variance in water quality can completely alter the taste, smell, and appearance of ice cubes. Contaminants in water freeze too and create nasty, cloudy ice that will melt into your beverages.

The Best Recipe for Ice

Ingredient: filtered water

Filtered water is key to clearer, crisper ice and refreshing drinks. Here’s how an ice filtration system makes cleaner water for better ice:

1. Remove dirt. Sediment and other contaminants that float in your water cloud your ice and make it look and taste nasty. Not all contaminants are visible, but just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean your water is clean.
2. Remove chlorine. If your water comes from a municipal plant, then it contains chemical byproducts like chlorine and chloramines. These chemicals taint your ice and leave a bad taste in your mouth.
3. Use soft water. Hardness minerals like calcium and magnesium are beneficial to coffee and espresso, but not for ice. These unwanted minerals precipitate out when water freezes and create particles on top of ice cubes that you can blow off like a dusty bookshelf. Calcium and magnesium also build up and create scale, the most common cause for ice maker malfunctions.

Hard water deposits make your ice taste terrible, look foggy, or clog up your ice maker entirely, resulting in costly maintenance fees. Some ice makers come with a pre-installed filter, but this filter must be changed often. Installing an ice filtration system that includes scale control or a water softener will save you time, frustration, and money in the long run. A reverse osmosis system is another option that will remove most dissolved solids from your water and produce the clearest ice. RO systems are often sold to cruise ships to create crystalline ice sculptures.

Visit our blog for a guide to commercial food and beverage filtration.

The Ice Wand

Scale buildup creates cracks and crevices for bacteria and other nasty particles to hide in. If you’re not using a commercial ice filtration system, then you could be selling contaminated ice. The Ice Wand helps keep your ice maker clean without using chemicals and prevents the drain tube from clogging. You should replace your Ice Wand every three to six months depending on the capacity of your ice maker.

Browse commercial ice filtration systems by brand: 3M Aqua-pure | Everpure | Culligan

Browse all water filtration systems.