A Guide to Maintaining and Cleaning Your Cold Rooms

You’ve invested in a cold room, its running efficiently and maintaining the temperatures required for your products – but how do you keep your cold room running efficiently and ensure its longevity? Maintenance and cleaning could be the answer.

Why Do I Need To Maintain and Clean My Cold Room?

Cold room maintenance and cleaning is important for a range of factors, including:

• Cold room longevity – if you’ve invested in a cold room, you want it to last as long as it can and poor maintenance can reduce your cold room’s lifespan
• Cold room efficiency – an efficient cold room is a cold room which could be costing you more money in the long run
• Health and safety – poorly maintained cold room parts can pose a health and safety risk – from ice build-up causing slip risks, to damaged cold room door handles increasing the risk of being locked in – these should not be ignored
• Protect your products – cold rooms which aren’t maintained can result in temperature fluctuations which impact your products

These factors can affect your business in many forms, from putting your employees and products at risk, to impact on energy and efficiency.

Maintaining My Cold Room

Cold rooms are designed and built from a range of components to provide optimal efficiency and insulation properties. Each of these components has an impact on your cold room, so they need to be considered in your cold room maintenance plan.

Cold room panels
The panels which make up your cold room are key to maintaining the internal temperatures – if there is damage to your cold room panels this could result in a negative effect on your cold room’s insulation. Checking your cold room panels for gouges, delamination, ice build-up, and more can help to identify if there is a problem to be rectified.

Cold room doors
Cold room doors are an access point to your cold room, and they seal the cold room – preventing cold air from escaping and ambient air from entering. If your cold room door isn’t sealing properly, then the internal temperatures can be affected, resulting in your refrigeration systems having to work harder. This can result in reduced energy efficiency and impact product quality.

Poorly maintained cold room doors can also pose a health and safety risk if your employees get trapped in the cold room. This is particularly dangerous in freezer cold rooms due to the negative temperatures.

Check these cold room door elements and carry out regular maintenance to avoid these issues:

• Cold room door gaskets and seals – check these have no cracks or damage which is impacting the seal around the door frame
• Cold room door handles – make sure these are functioning properly and latching correctly. These may need adjusting, or the handle parts may need to be replaced
• Cold room door hinges – cold room hinges can affect how your door opens and closes, so checking these can help with door safety

The elements to be checked and maintained will differ dependent on what cold room doors you have – sliding cold room doors have more components than a hinged cold room door, and high speed doors will need to be serviced by an expert.

MTCSS can help with every aspect of cold room door maintenance, from offering advice to supplying spare parts, our team is here to help.

Cold room refrigeration systems
The refrigeration systems in your cold rooms are responsible for refrigerating the air and working in conjunction with the other components to maintain the internal temperatures.

We recommend your refrigeration units are serviced every 6 months to ensure its functioning efficiently, safely and for the longevity of your refrigeration systems.

You can check the fans are clean and not blocked, which can affect the functioning of your refrigeration units. Monitoring the cold room temperature for any fluctuations is also important, as it can be indicator of issues within your cold room.

Cleaning My Cold Room
Cleaning your cold room is an essential part of cold room maintenance and management. We recommend cleaning your cold room at least once a month, however this is dependent on what your cold room is used for and the products its stored.

And if you spill something in your cold room, clean it up immediately to avoid health and safety slip risks! But be aware of the products you should use on your cold room floors and panels, and whether you can use water on the flooring, especially if there is no drainage systems.

We also recommend having your cold room professionally cleaned – again this is dependent on your cold room’s usage – every six months. This can coincide with your cold room’s service plan.

Find out more about cold room cleaning in our recent blog!

Cold Room Management

Cold room management is how your cold room is managed and used day-to-day, as this has an impact on its longevity and performance. Ensuring your employees and cold room users understand cold room best practice is key:

• Don’t leave doors open for longer than necessary
• Don’t slam cold room doors
• Don’t hit cold room panels with trolleys or cages
• Don’t overstock the cold room
• Report any issues with the cold room and doors as soon as possible

These day-to-day actions impact your cold room in the long term, so education on your cold room is highly important.

MTCSS can help with cold room maintenance and refurbishment; provide spares and parts for your cold rooms and doors; offer advice on cold room cleaning; and more! If you’d like to speak to one of our team about your cold room requirements, you can call us on 01886 833381, email us at spares@mtcss.co.uk, or fill in an enquiry form here!