A walk-in freezer is a cold storage facility that can range in size from a closet to a good-sized room.  The main reason to have a cold storage facility is to allow a safe, temperature-regulated space to store a large amount of food over an extended period of time.  Obviously intended mostly for commercial use, the generally accepted notion is that if your refrigeration needs exceed 30 cubic feet and your business serves more than 250 meals daily, you should utilize the space provided by a walk-in freezer.

Since there is such a variance in size options for each walk-in freezer, you need to determine how much freezer space you will actually need to utilize.  This is a simple calculation that can be done by estimating that you need 1 to 1.5 cubic feet per meal you serve daily.  You can also consider that for every 28 to 30 pounds of food, you will need about 1 cubic foot of storage space.  If this figure is determined to be large enough that you need a room-sized walk-in freezer, rather than simply a closet-sized one, you then need to consider the space that aisles take up.  Multiplying the cubic foot measurement you get by 2.5 will allow for 40% of the freezer to be storage space and 60% to be aisles and spaces between the products.

Remember that the walk-in freezer portion may account for only about half of your cold storage needs.  The other half will be in the form of a refrigerator with less intensely cold temperatures.  Particularly large kitchens may need up to three walk-in coolers to attain the differing temperature needs.  One for produce should be about 41 degrees Fahrenheit.  The second for meats and dairy products should be kept between about 33-40 degrees Fahrenheit.  The third is for deep freezing needs near -20 degrees Fahrenheit, keeping foods free from bacteria and greatly improving shelf life.

For powering your walk-in freezer, you will need at least a 2-horsepower compressor to cool a 9-foot-square freezer.  For situations where anything is regularly done that drains the cooling ability of your walk-in freezer—such as the frequent need to open the door, desire to have glass display doors, more than one door per freezer, or an ambient temperature of close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit—your freezer could require up to a 7.5-horsepower remote system.  No matter what cooling requirements you have, All Refrigeration Equipment can provide you with what you need.

While a quick glance at walk-in coolers gives off the appearance of indestructibility, closer inspection reveals that the implementation of a few safety and maintenance advice is necessary to improve the longevity of your equipment.  Walk-in coolers are large and used mostly in commercial applications.  If you run a catering or party planning business with a great deal of food involved, you undoubtedly have a walk-in cooler on your premises.  While it may still be covered under the warranty, there are simple things you can do each day, or even less frequently in some cases, to help the life of your valuable equipment last even longer.

The first tip is to make sure the hinges and door gaskets of the main door are cleaned on a regular basis.  The door gaskets are made out of rubber, which have a tendency to rot over time as they collect grime and food on the surface.  Rotting obviously weakens sealing properties of the door, which can lead to more expensive electric bills and an overworked compressor to keep the walk-in cooler cold enough.  A mixture of warm water and baking soda is an easy way to safely clean the door gaskets.  Hinges can also be “greased” with a small amount of petroleum jelly.  These procedures should occur a few times during the year.  The floors of walk-in coolers should be damp-mopped frequently, especially in the case of a spill, but never hosed down. 

Coils inside the compressors can get dirty, causing walk-in coolers to run much hotter, shortening the compressor's life.  Every three months it is important that they are cleaned with an industrial vacuum.  Part of what makes walk-in coolers possible is air circulation.  Remember that packing food containers together prevents the necessary airflow from occurring within the walk-in cooler.  In addition to keeping food slightly spaced, be careful to keep containers, especially those constructed of cardboard, from touching the wall.  They will have a tendency to freeze to the wall, potentially damaging the product as well as the walls of the cooler.

The final tip to making the most of your walk-in coolers is to utilize a reliable rotation system.  Following the “first in, first out” rule is the best.  The easiest way to implement this is to use colored dots indicating days of the week so everyone accessing food knows what has been in the freezer longer.  Without such a rotation, food has a tendency to be forgotten and stick to the equipment after months of forgetting about it.

The uses of refrigeration buildings go beyond just storing food.  While this is obviously the first thing that most people think of, you can store non-edibles in a cold environment for a similar reason that you choose to store food in a cold place.  Cooler temperatures found in refrigeration buildings serve the purpose of increasing the life of whatever product is inside.  This means that any delicate products like important or ancient documents, furniture or automobiles can be placed in a refrigeration building and remain in better condition for longer.

The key to the long-lasting effect that cold temperatures have is the climate controlled environment.  A certain level of humidity, air flow and temperature is consistently maintained in refrigeration buildings to reduce the wear and tear that regular fluctuations in the atmosphere cause.  Of course, probably the most common products to store in a refrigerated environment is food, but when you begin considering entire buildings that are kept cold at all times, you open up the possibilities of storing some of these other items that take up a great deal more space.

A chamber as large as a building that is kept at refrigerator temperatures does not function in the same way as air conditioning.  Indeed, acquiring the needed temperatures of a refrigerator in so large a space is not like over-working your air conditioning at home until it feels like an icebox in your living room.  Refrigeration buildings have an upper crawl space above the visible ceiling panels.  This space is maintained under a constant negative pressure to provide an outflow of refrigerated air through the insulation and into the crawlspace.  This effectively prevents hot air from flowing into the space of the upper portions of the refrigeration building and keeps damaging moisture precipitation from getting into the insulation.

To make refrigeration buildings possible, the walls, ceiling and even the floor must be extremely insulated with vapor barriers.  The chamber itself is generally located within a building that has separate outer walls and a roof with the crawlspace located between the roof of the refrigeration chamber and the ceiling of the entire building.  Since warm air tends to flow in through the walls and ceiling and cold air flows out at the bottom, the inward flow must be controlled from the top of the refrigeration building to prevent the loss of cold air at the bottom.  Innovations are constantly underway to make refrigeration buildings more efficient than ever.

When it comes to maintaining your refrigeration systems, the regular cleaning of several components is essential.  Possibly the most important of these components is the air-cooled condenser.  If you neglect to keep the condenser clean, the result will be irregular operating temperatures and pressure inside the unit.  This should be avoided because over time it will lead to compression failure and a corresponding high cost of repair.  The result of not keeping the condenser clean is comparable to allowing the water level in the radiator of a car to drop.  With regular preventative measures, you can avoid paying expensive repair costs and keep your refrigeration system running smoothly and efficiently. 

The condenser itself it a metal-finished assembly with copper tubes running through the fins, alike in appearance to the radiator of a car.  The recommended procedure for cleaning the condenser in refrigeration systems is to remove the grill on the front of it.  Dust collects on the inside of the grill, which can be removed with a brush or vacuum cleaner.  If you use the brush method, be sure to brush parallel to the aluminum fins rather than across them, as this could cause bending of the aluminum material.

Upon cleaning the grill that covers the condenser, you should see if the condenser itself is blocked with oil.  If this is the case, you will be required to shut off all refrigeration systems and use a degreaser to clean it.  This can be messy, but when done thoroughly, the system performance will be maximized and the life of the compressor will be extended.  After this interior cleaning is complete, refit the grill onto the condenser.  This entire procedure should take place no less frequently than every six months.  For particularly dusty or greasy kitchen areas, it should be completed even more regularly.

It is important to note that some small low temperature cabinets or chest freezers do not have finned condensers.  A plate or wire condenser, which is similar to what is found on household refrigeration systems, is sufficient for these smaller applications.  Some of the newest systems are fitted with what are referred to as “reversing” condenser fan motors to decrease the recurrence of needing to clean them.  Also, these new refrigeration systems are also equipped with overheating temperature sensors so the compressor will shut off automatically if it overheats.  This is an excellent addition as it helps avoid expensive repair fees.

If you are the proud owner of any kind of cooking establishment, you will need to educate yourself about the different commercial refrigeration equipment that may be useful for you.  Units come in various sizes with different functions, all of which should be considered for your purposes.  If you need to chill food quickly, a powerful blast freezer is called for.  For large storage space of overstock food items, a large walk-in freezer is the solution.  In the front of your establishment, you may want to display confections, meats and other products in refrigeration display cases or glass door wall cases.  Whatever you choose, the size is a huge factor.

To estimate the size for your commercial refrigeration equipment, you will need to know how much food you plan on serving each day your business is open.  This has a direct impact on the amount of food you need to keep stored for future days of the week, so understanding either the number of servings or poundage of food is needed to accurately estimate the size of freezer you will need.  A huge variety of storage capacities are offered.  If you purchase too small, you will reduce the efficiency of the fridge by cramming food in and limiting air flow.  Too large of a purchase will result in wasted funds going toward your monthly electric bill.

The space you have available in your kitchen must also be taken into consideration.  If you are in the process of designing a kitchen, you will be surprised how much space all the cooking equipment takes up, leaving you with little room for commercial refrigeration equipment.  If you are unsure about your storage space, look at blueprints or have a computer-aided drawing rendered to give you a better idea of how much room you actually have to work with.

Once you have the space for your commercial refrigeration equipment calculated, you can discover if you have enough room to serve to the capacity that you want by figuring one cubic foot of space per serving a day.  You could also calculate in terms of poundage, making sure that for 28 to 30 pounds of food, you have that one foot of cubic space.  This is not to say that a single serving of food weighs 28 to 30 pounds, put to keep your freezer stock up, this is the calculation that should be made.