Preventative maintenance plays an essential role in ensuring your commercial cool room continues to operate in an effective, energy efficient manner. This ensures stock and supplies are stored in an appropriately sterile environment at the right temperatures to ensure freshness and safety. Here are some tips and key considerations from Cold-Rite, the coolroom builders Sydney businesses trust for 24/7 refrigeration maintenance services.
Weekly Cleaning
When it comes to weekly cleaning, always keep the floor and all surfaces in your commercial cool room clean and clear from obstruction. Sweep or vacuum dust on the floor and tackle surfaces with a mop and cloth, using warm water and mild detergent or specialised cold room cleaning products. Ensure any spillages are addressed immediately and discard spoiled products to prevent bacteria growth. After cleaning, check that the cold room is dry. This avoids a slippery floor and a build-up of ice from excess water in your cold room.
Monthly Checks
Heat exchangers must be regularly inspected and cleaned to improve the performance of the system. Seals, insulation and door alignment of refrigeration units also need to be inspected. Aim to do these checks once a month to ensure you spot any issues promptly. Seals on the entryway of your commercial cool room in particular are prone to wear and become damaged over time, wasting energy. You should also check:
- Evaporator casing and all blowing fans
- Control valves are fully functioning
- Reverse blowing is working properly
- Defrosting function is operating properly
- Proper temperature is maintained when the cold storage space has a full load.
Ensure dust and spider webs don’t clog the fins, products are not blocking the fan inside and that grass isn’t growing in front of the outside exchanger. Maintaining an unobstructed area of at least a metre in front of and behind the coil helps ensure proper cool room functionality.
Cleaning Condenser Coils
Cleaning condenser coils on a regular basis (at least quarterly) is a key aspect of preventative maintenance. This doesn’t take long and ensures safe, reliable cool room function. Clean dust and dirt off coils using specialised coil cleaners. Avoid using corrosive cleaners and take care not to remove too much metal.
Condenser coils play the essential role of cooling and condensing liquid refrigerant. Heat needs to be released in order to cool the refrigerant. As dirt and dust accumulates on the condenser coils, this becomes harder to do. This leads to overheating, meaning the compressor has to use more energy. Dirt coils can also harbour mould and bacteria.
Fewer Breakdowns
Unfortunately, too many coolrooms Sydney businesses use don’t receive the proper regular maintenance, leading to breakdown repairs. Keeping up with a regular maintenance schedule can reduce the chance of a breakdown by up to 70%. Preventing repair issues is simple by putting regular cool room maintenance in the hands of professionals who can ensure all required checks and preventative maintenance is carried out.
Maintenance for Coolrooms Sydney Businesses Can Trust
At Cold-Rite Refrigeration, our preventive maintenance technicians are the coolroom builders Sydney businesses can call for trusted maintenance and repairs, whether you have a walk-in fridge or an industrial blast freezer. We have a fleet of mobile workshops that can help you with breakdown services, installation or planned maintenance throughout the greater Sydney metropolitan area, extending to the Blue Mountains, Central and South Coasts.
