Choosing A Cold Room with MTCSS
Choosing a cold room for your business is no easy task; you’ll need to take into account a wide range of factors and requirements to make sure you get the cold room that is best suited to your needs. An essential component of many facilities, a cold room allows you to store and preserve a range of goods and materials with greater use of space and better energy-efficiency than any other cold storage solution. Providing you with the space you need to organise your storage optimally, streamlining your business and saving your staff time and effort.
The experts at MT Cold Storage Solutions will be happy to help you choose the cold room that perfectly suits your business needs – if you’d like further advice on choosing a cold room, you can get in touch with us via telephone, 01886 833381, via emailing sales@mtcss.co.uk, or by submitting a response on our contact form on this site!
How a Cold Room Works
A cold room works in largely the same way that a domestic refrigerator works – insulating an area and using refrigerant-equipped cooling units to lower the temperature inside to a certain level, specified by a thermostat. Generally, the cooling units work by heat exchange, with air being drawn into the unit, cooled via the use of refrigerant chemicals, then blown out to circulate in the cold room, lowering the overall temperature. The cold room temperature will be monitored by a thermostat, and if the temperature rises too high or drops too low, it sends a signal to the cooling unit to adjust its output accordingly.
The insulation in the cold room is one of the most vital features, as it prevents the cold room from becoming a heat sink, which would draw warmth from the surrounding environment until it equalised with the outside world. Without insulation, warmth will seep in, forcing your cooling unit to work harder to keep the interior cold, enormously boosting your energy usage and potentially causing the cooling unit to burn out. This insulation isn’t just your cold room walls, either – insulated flooring is also vital, as are insulated ceilings and doors, creating a maximally insulated environment for your cold storage.
As well as protecting your energy bill and cooling unit, your cold room insulation also protects your stored goods, keeping the temperature right and preventing them from warming up too much and being ruined. At MT Cold Storage Solutions, we provide cold room insulation, cooling units and thermostats to create the most effective cold storage space possible. Ask about our cold rooms today!
Why Have a Cold Room?
A modular cold room or industrial cold room is the ideal cold storage solution for a business which must refrigerate or chill large amounts of stock – including foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, IT servers and computing equipment, and other products and materials. A cold room is ideal for this purpose thanks to the space offered inside, and the fact that it is one large space which can be maintained at the same temperature, saving energy compared to a bank of smaller refrigerators or freezers. By consolidating many individual refrigerator’s worth of cold storage into one space, you also improve your business’ use of space, as only one insulating outer case and only one cooling unit is necessary to keep everything at the required temperature – freeing up other valuable space for use by your staff or customers!
Cold Room or Refrigerators?
If you are only storing a small volume of goods, then a refrigerator may be the best choice for your business. However, these cold storage solutions are severely space-limited, and at larger volumes or levels of demand, your business will need to upgrade – either to a bank of refrigerators, or to a cold room. While it may seem like a big investment, a cold room has many advantages over a bank of refrigerators, including:
Better Use of Space
As mentioned above, consolidating your cold storage into one space greatly improves the available space in an area. In a cold room, the cold storage area is in one place and is surrounded by only one set of walls and doors, with only one cooling unit to occupy space. In a bank of refrigerators offering an equivalent storage space, the space is divided into many smaller pieces, and each piece of cold storage space is surrounded by its own walls and door. Each space will be separated from another by not just its own wall, but the wall of the next refrigerator, and each one will have its own cooling unit, requiring much more access to power to run. As a result, the same amount of cold storage space occupies far more of your business premises than it otherwise would – space that is valuable and could be better spent in other ways.
Better Use of Energy
In addition to more sensible use of space, consolidating your cold storage into one room provides better energy efficiency. The thicker, more effective insulation of a cold room, and the difficulty in raising the temperature of a large volume of cold air compared to a small one, means that the temperature within a cold room is much more stable than in a smaller refrigerator. Therefore the cooling unit doesn’t need to work as hard to maintain an optimum operating temperature. In addition to this, it is more energy-efficient to operate one cooling unit than it is to run a dozen smaller units.
Overall, choosing a cold room over a bank of refrigerators is a great way to keep your business’ energy bill healthy and your costs down!
More Storage Ability
The larger space available within a cold room compared to the partitioned-off spaces available in multiple refrigerators means that larger items and bulk items can be stored easily – but also means that furniture such as shelving can be installed, providing more opportunities for organisation and streamlining your storage solutions, so your stock is always easy to find and where you need it to be.
Why Have a Walk-in Freezer?
A walk-in freezer is, as the name suggests, is a freezer big enough to allow your staff to walk into the cold room to retrieve frozen goods. The freezers available from MT Cold Storage Solutions are capable of achieving temperatures anywhere between 0°C and -40°C, making them powerful chillers, suitable for freezing and deep freezing.
While microbial action is slowed at refrigeration temperatures, prolonging the lifespan of foodstuffs and other biodegradable items, it can be completely halted at freezing temperatures, preserving these goods almost indefinitely. Where you need to be able to preserve items for long periods of time, or preserve them at a certain point of their ageing (as with “frozen from fresh” foods) then a freezer is the ideal choice for you.
As with chiller cold rooms, a walk-in freezer provides large amounts of cold storage in a way that is both space-efficient and energy-efficient, and may be the best choice for your business.
What is a Cold Room Used For?
A cold room is used to preserve goods which would degrade at higher temperatures, including foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, agricultural and horticultural supplies and even operational IT servers, which must not build up too much heat or they will suffer decreases in performance and lifespan.
A cold room’s low temperatures, which can range from 18°C to 0°C in the industrial cold rooms provided by MT Cold Storage Solutions, ensure that the goods and materials stored inside are kept at a low enough temperature to preserve them, preventing microbial action or the action of higher temperatures from breaking them down or degrading them.
Cold rooms for the food and drinks industry, as well as in grocery retail and restaurants, preserve the food inside in the same way a kitchen refrigerator does. In pharmaceutical industry cold rooms, a cold room protects pharmaceuticals from the degradation suffered at higher temperatures, and in the IT industry, delicate computer equipment which must be kept cool is protected from overheating by situating it in a cold room.
What Industries Can Make Use of a Cold Room?
There are a huge number of industries which can make use of a cold room for one reason or another. Those mentioned above – food and drinks, retail, restaurants, pharmaceuticals and IT – are just a few of those industries which can benefit from cold storage.
Cold rooms for agriculture and horticulture can also be beneficial, and use of a cold room can also benefit abattoirs and slaughterhouses, chemical processing, manufacturing and industry, and various other industries. Wherever there is a need for cold storage in large volume, or easy-access, well-organised refrigeration, the cold rooms from MT Cold Storage Solutions are ideal.
Where to Buy a Cold Room
If you are looking for a cold room, then MT Cold Storage Solutions can help you. MTCSS have decades of experience in providing bespoke cold storage solutions to fit any business and any requirements, so we will be able to help you find the cold room that is perfect for you. If you have any questions about cold rooms, or you would some advice and information on the best sort of cold room for your business, you can call MTCSS any time on 01886 833381, email us on sales@mtcss.co.uk, or use the contact form on this site for more information – we’ll be happy to help you.
You can also use those contact details to request a quote for a cold room or arrange a site visit – whatever you need to arrange the ideal cold storage solution for your needs.
What to Consider When Buying Your Cold Room
There are several factors to take into account when you are choosing a cold room or deciding whether to buy a cold room. The questions you’ll need to ask yourself when buying a cold room include, but aren’t limited to:
What Size Do You Need?
The cost of your cold room will depend on the size you need. The size of cold room you choose will also depend on what you need to store, the amounts and level of organisation required, and the available space. Bear in mind that larger cold rooms may be more expensive to install and maintain, but will be more efficient than a number of smaller chillers providing equivalent cold storage space.
What are Your Temperature Requirements?
If you need to store goods between 0°C and +18°C, then a chiller or ambient cold room will be ideal for you. However, if you need lower temperatures to preserve your goods, below freezing, then a freezer cold rom available from MT Cold Storage Solutions will be better suited to your needs. Able to operate at temperatures between 0°C and -40°C, our walk-in freezers are perfect for freezing and deep-freezing large volumes of goods at temperatures below what a cold room can supply.
What Industry are You Buying For?
The industry that you are buying for will have an impact on the cold storage solution you choose, and the features of the cold room which will be most useful to you. Several industries, like food and pharmaceuticals, have exacting standards for hygiene and prevention of contamination, making an easy-to-clean, easy-to-maintain cold room a necessity. Others, like agriculture or chemical processing, may necessitate a hard-wearing, durable cold room. Consider the industry which your cold room will be serving, and the requirements which that industry will place on your cold storage. Will your cold room have to conform to any legal requirements? Will it have any particular challenges to contend with?
What are Your Existing Facilities?
MT Cold Storage Solutions works with your existing facilities to provide a full turnkey service in the design and installation of your cold room – ensuring minimal disruption to your day-to-day activities and business productivity. However, no two installations are the same – if your premises already has a large space where the cold room can be installed, the installation will be more seamless than if you need to clear a space or renovate your premises to make room. Whatever your existing facilities, MTCSS can help you to find the perfect cold storage solution.
Contact MT Cold Storage Solutions Today!
If you are interested in a cold room from MT Cold Storage Solutions, you can get in touch with us using our telephone number, 018856 833381, to speak to one of our experts. Alternatively, you can email us on sales@mtcss.co.uk or submit our contact form, available on this site!
Once you’re in touch, you’ll be able to ask for a quote, arrange a site visit, get advice on the type of cold room that suits your needs and ask any questions you may have – our head office staff have decades of experience and will be happy to help you with anything you need!