5 Epic Mistakes to Avoid With Your Cold Room
Whether you are just at the planning stage of designing your commercial kitchen, or you already have a coldroom filled with stock, the following tips will serve you well, if not right now, but in the future.
- Do your research – A reputable cold room builder will be able to provide you with examples of similar sized projects they have worked on & should happily pass on their clients details for reference. Ensure they are licenced with the QBCC and hold relevant licences and insurances.
- Do not scrimp when it comes to choosing panel thickness or equipment loads. Any good cold room estimator should be asking you all of the relevant questions to ensure your cold room will do the job for you:
• “What product and volume of product is going into the room?”
• “What temperature will the product be when it goes into the room & in what time frame do you need it to reach required temperature?”
• “Is the coldroom located outside open to the elements or located inside another building – will there be adequate airflow”
• “Is the room sitting on a suspended slab?”
All of these questions (and more) will determine the panel thickness and insulation required, the sizing of the refrigeration equipment even down to the type of floor that should be used. - Have you chosen the best location for the room & its refrigeration components? Refrigeration condensing units require good ventilation to ensure effective running conditions. If they are placed in a small roof void with no mechanical air flow provided, they will struggle in high ambient temperatures, this will shorten the life of the condenser and increase your running costs. The ideal location for a unit is to be placed in an outdoor area, well positioned away from other heat producing sources.
- Do not leave your door open for long periods of time. It only takes 30 seconds of a door being left open to the ambient air for ice to start to grow on an evaporator fan. Once ice begins to grow inside the room, it will continue to do so until it is mechanically removed (by manual defrost). This can be done by one of our friendly technicians, but a much more cost effective option for you could be to have a strip curtain installed if regular access for restocking is required (we can help you with this too!).
- Do regular maintenance and have your refrigeration equipment serviced by a qualified refrigeration technician. Dirty coils, blocked drains, defrost not working, loose electrical connections, damaged door gaskets and refrigerant leaks (to name a few), are some of the issues that are addressed with regular servicing by a professional.
There is not much that Brett Sherrin hasn’t seen in his 30 + years of building cold rooms
Please see below for some examples of rooms built with no sub-floor heaters, inadequate floor insulation and inferior vapour barriers and poor sealing of walls to floor.
Very dangerous situation – water pooling in the doorway due to no heater cable or poor door sealing. 
Water pooling around the exterior of the coldroom due to inadequate sealing or omission of heater cables. 
Poorly sealing door resulting in ice build up 
“Raining from above” – This can happen when a cold room or freezer is built on a suspended slab and no sub-floor heater cables have been laid first.
At the end of the day, your cold rooms efficiency is influenced by design, installation, operation and maintenance, so why not use, Subzero Projects, South East Queensland’s Leading Cold Room Construction Team
Call our friendly sales team today for an obligation free quote 07 3245 5777