To keep your products fresh and industrial freezer sanitary, it needs to run at a very specific temperature. If too much warm air gets inside, it can cause your refrigeration system to work overtime, which results in ice build-up and over freezing. As well, if your industrial refrigeration system isn’t properly functioning, it can spoil your products, drive up your energy bills and threaten your business operations.
Maintaining your refrigerator’s ice levels requires a combination of daily refrigerator maintenance responsibilities and defrost system management. While many modern industrial freezers have a self-defrosting feature, sometimes, the only way to combat extensive ice build-up is by manually running a defrost cycle.
Let’s take a look at Cold-Rite’s top tips for defrosting your industrial freezer.
Tip One: Preventing Ice Build-Up
Adhering to a few best practices can reduce the amount of warm air that gets inside your industrial freezer and causes the compressor to keep running. For one, when entering and exiting a walk-in freezer, you should always open and close the freezer door as quickly as possible. You can also install vinyl strip curtains in the doorway to block airflow. Next, when you need to repack your freezer, switching off the refrigeration system and fan motors ensures there is no negative pressure to encourage warm air to rush inside.
Tip Two: Understand Your Auto-Defrost System
An auto-defrost feature automatically shuts down the compressor if it senses ice build-up. You should first find out whether or not your commercial refrigeration unit has an auto-defrost system, and, if so, what kind.
Depending on the products you’re storing and the desired temperature, you may have or want to install one of the following auto-defrost systems
- A typical compressor-off system shuts down the compressor to keep the refrigerator pipes frost-free.
- Some industrial freezers have defrost timers that shut off the compressor at specific times.
- A different type of defrost timer can shut off the evaporator fans and turn on the defrost heaters to melt ice off the evaporator coils.
Defrost Cycle Maintenance
Proper refrigerator maintenance should involve up to four defrost cycles per day. If your freezer doesn’t have an auto-defrost system, then you should check for condensation and run defrost cycles manually and frequently. In a typical defrost cycle, the defrost heaters turn on to melt ice off of the evaporator coils.
To avoid excessive ice build-up, check your industrial refrigerator at least once a week to ensure the evaporator cools are free of ice, and that water can freely flow down the drain.
Call Sydney’s Industrial Freezer Specialists
In addition to regulating freezer traffic and making defrost cycles part of your refrigerator maintenance routine, you should have a trained professional assess your freezer’s condition a few times per year. Furthermore, if running a defrost cycle doesn’t help regulate your freezer temperature, you should get a professional diagnosis to ensure there are no bigger issues at play.
