It’s understood in the cold room industry, how essential it is to ensure all cold room fridges and cold room freezers are insulated as thoroughly and efficiently as possible: the main reasons for this relate to reduced running cost and energy efficiency.
The simplest way to do this is to choose high-quality cold room panels when designing and ordering your cold rooms, whether it’s for refrigerated or frozen goods.
So, what are the key features of good cold room panels and how can you make sure you are insulating your cold room effectively?
What Makes A Good Cold Room Panel?
If you are looking for cold room panels for a walk-in cold room of your own, what should you be looking for?
1. The Right Type of Panel for the Job
Choosing the correct type of panel for your cold room means ensuring you get the right thickness cold room panel, which will depend on your requirements.
The thickness of your cold room panel is important, as this is what helps to keep the cold air in, and the warmer air out – giving increased control over thermal change.
Choosing the correct thickness also allows you to reduce the amount of time you will need to run your refrigeration systems, as the cooled air will remain trapped within the boundaries of your walk-in fridge or walk-in freezer.
For the most part, the most common two thicknesses of cold room panels include:
- 80mm MT Chill panels – which are ideal for chiller cold rooms and ambient areas
- 100mm MT Freeze panels – which are considered the ideal choice for freezer cold rooms
2. Cold Room Panels with Good Thermal Conductivity
When looking at materials that need to minimise temperature change, we often consider the thermal conductivity coefficient of the materials.
Thermal conductivity is described as the ability of a material to conduct (or help allow) heat from one side to the other and is usually represented by a thermal conductivity coefficient.
The cold room panels from MTCSS have a thermal conductivity coefficient of 10°C or 0.020-0.023 W/mk, which makes them perfectly designed for cold room wall construction, as a material is considered to have a lower rate of heat transfer (low thermal conductivity) the k-value (as in W/mk) is lower than 1.
3. Included Fire Resistance
Though not essential, an added benefit is fire resistance – which can help protect stock and your property while also reducing damage if a fire occurs.
Both MT Chill and MT Freeze cold room panels are manufactured in polyisocyanurate, a thermoset plastic most often seen as a foam, that has a fire reaction class of B-s1, d0, according to EC Declaration of Conformity and laboratory testing.
Products with a fire classification of B-s1, d0 illustrate that a product contributes to a fire to a very limited extent, that its smoke production is very limited, and does not produce flaming droplets – which can easily help spread fires.
All with the thermal conductivity coefficient you need to keep your stock cold and increase its life.
Other Ways To Help Insulate Your Cold Room Fridges and Freezers
While cold room panels build the basis for energy-efficient cold rooms, there are many other components that you can consider to keep your energy costs as low as possible. These include:
Cold Room Doors
A well-fitted cold room door can keep much more cool air inside, stop leakage around the perimeter, and limit temperature change in areas adjacent to and opposite the door – which are much more likely to be affected.
Studies have also shown that a temperature change of as much as +4 to +10 °C can occur every time the cold room door is opened. If this affects your cold room, you can also consider adding cold room insulated curtains for an efficient fix, as these will trap more cold air and keep out warm air that can raise the temperature within and cause spoilage.
Cold Room Shelving
While it is important to ensure your cold room is made from materials that reduce thermal change, it is worth sparing a thought for how you intend to store and arrange your stock to keep it in the best condition possible.
Well-laid-out cold room shelving can allow cool air to circulate and stop hot spots – while also allowing for easy stock-taking!
High-quality cold room panels should always be your main focus with cold room construction or refurbishment. To discuss investing in cold room panels, reach out to the team at MTCSS – you can call us on 01886 833 381 , email us at sales@mtcss.co.uk or fill in an enquiry form below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
