Commercial chest freezers are the heartbeat of the food industry. Supermarkets, restaurants, and other eateries depend on this essential equipment to maintain fresh food supplies and signature flavours.
If you work in the food industry, you must have a reliable commercial chest freezer. Commercial chest freezer maintenance ensures that your freezer remains an invaluable tool.
Chest freezer maintenance ensures that your freezer constantly stays at freezing temp. It also ensures that the commercial chest freezer saves you money on energy costs, lasts longer, and gives you a greater return on investment.
Considering how vital the commercial chest freezer is to your business, here are some tips for extending the life of your commercial chest freezer. With these tips, you can keep your commercial chest freezer in good working order to cut down on replacement costs:
Keep Your Commercial Chest Freezer Clean
Maintaining a clean commercial chest freezer is critical to its effective operation. Therefore, you should to clean your freezer regularly. Ideally, you should have a day for your chest freezer maintenance when you clean its fan blades and evaporator coils. For optimal storage of frozen foods, commercial chest freezers recirculate cold air at temperatures below zero. But they can’t do it without a fan, compressor, and evaporator that are all in good functioning order to generate cold air and maintain appropriate food storage temperatures.
In most cases, dust accumulation on fan blades can cause your chest freezer to have internal temperatures that are warmer than usual. This might also increase energy usage as the freezer works harder to maintain its normal temperature. Increasing energy bills is just a tiny part of the problem. In severe cases, such commercial freezers may eventually stop working.
When evaporator coils are obstructed with debris, the system can no longer function at peak efficiency. Maintaining optimal food storage temperatures necessitates regular cleaning of industrial freezers, including the coils.
Cleaning the interior and outside the freezer with a moist cloth and a light detergent can help enhance the airflow and minimise the energy needed to run the appliance.
Keep The Door of Your Commercial Freezer Closed
If you have a big restaurant, this might not be possible. During peak periods, your chefs will likely need to access cold storage to retrieve ingredients and cooked food as often as possible. While this is understandable, the doors of your chest freezers should not be open unnecessarily or left open for too long. Research shows that your freezer uses 40% more power with open doors.
After every use, you must ensure that the doors are closed correctly. When you leave the doors open, warm air gets into the freezer. Excess exposure to warm air might lead to condensation, leading to frost build-up and putting extra strain on the compressor.
When your freezer’s compressor works harder than usual, it increases the commercial chest freezer’s energy consumption. Since frozen foods are not kept in their ideal, sub-zero storage environment, higher temperatures may also affect the safety of the food in your chest freezer.
Therefore, it’s recommended that you keep the door closed and locked whenever possible. Also, ensure the door gaskets are in good condition and replace any damaged, cracked, or worn. That way, you can ensure a tight seal that keeps the cold air in and the warm air out of your commercial chest freezer.
Do you know your commercial chest freezer has a defrost cycle? The defrost control board in commercial chest freezers regulates the timing of heater activation to prevent ice formation on evaporator coils. When the defrost cycle kicks in, the coils get hot enough to melt any ice or frost that has built up.
Depending on the model of your chest freezer, it could have between three and four defrost cycles every day. If your freezer is in good condition, the process happens independently and silently in about 15 to 20 minutes.
However, damaged, and inefficient commercial freezers may not defrost on their own, and this can increase operating costs. To avoid that, you can get sensor-equipped or smart defrost tools, as indicated by the appliance’s maker. This has the potential to boost energy efficiency, which can help you reduce your energy expenses.
Monitor the Temperature of Your Freezer
The purpose of commercial freezers is to store food for extended periods in a safe environment. Still, they cannot serve this purpose without maintaining proper temperatures.
Asides from food safety, keeping your chest freezer at the right temperature is essential for optimal energy savings. Freezers function best between -18 degrees Celsius and -20 degrees Celsius.
If the temperature is too high, it will cause the food to defrost. Similarly, if the temperature is too low, your freezer will be energy inefficient.
Even though most modern freezers have electronic thermostats to maintain a constant, ideal temperature, manual temperature checks are still necessary.
By checking the temperature of your industrial freezer regularly, you can keep an eye on food safety in storage and make any necessary adjustments to the temperature if it gets too high or too low.
Keep the Contents Within Acceptable Limits
While it’s true that a fully stocked freezer will function more efficiently than an empty one, overloading your freezer can block the air vents. When the airflow is impeded, the condenser and motor work harder, and more power is required to maintain the set temperature.
So how do you know if your commercial chest freezer is not too full?
If you can’t see the end of the freezer without stress, there are probably too many things in the freezer unit. Also, some commercial chest freezers come with thermal overload signals that warn you when the unit is too full. If your freezer does not have one, you can have a professional install it for you.
Keeping empty commercial freezers running constantly is another way to drive up your monthly energy bills. It might be more cost-effective to shut down some of your commercial freezers and use just one or two to store your food supplies.
Final Thoughts
A commercial freezer’s efficiency can be optimised by carefully balancing cleaning, stocking, temperature settings, and maintenance. While you can handle daily upkeep, such as cleaning and restocking on your own, you may need to schedule routine commercial chest freezer maintenance with experts.
Expert commercial freezer technicians can clean and repair vital parts, including fans, compressors, coils, electrical wiring, and thermostat controls, with the help of specialised equipment.
These experts will also help you spot and fix issues that could lead to further problems. While they’re there, they can also advise you on how to make the most of your commercial freezer and reduce energy costs. If you have any other questions regarding commercial chest freezers, you can contact us. We will be glad to help you.
