Cold Room Maintenance: What, Why, & How? The Ultimate Cold Room Repairs Checklist

Updated 8th January 2026

What is Cold Room Maintenance?

Cool room maintenance covers three major tasks, all of which work together to keep your refrigerated space in the best possible condition.

This includes regular cleaning, routine inspections, and refurbishment works, as and when needed.

Cold room maintenance can provide the following benefits: 

• Reduced health and safety risks to your staff 
• Help to reduce your energy expenditures and improve your energy efficiency, saving you money in the long run 
• Improve the lifespan of your cold room 
• Pass any upcoming audits 

If you don’t know where to start, you can follow our top tips below or arrange a cold room condition report from MTCSS. This highlights which parts of your cold rooms could benefit from cleaning as well as elements that could need refurbishment or replacing, allowing it run as optimally as possible. 

1.     Cleaning your cold room

As you might expect, cleaning will not necessarily fix any technical problems you may have with your cold room or cold room elements. It will, however, ensure the smooth running or usage of parts and minimise grease or grime build-up.

To figure out how often your cold room will need cleaning, there are a few factors that you should consider:

• What your cold room is used for and the products stored

If your cold room is used for the preparation or manufacturing of products, particularly food and drinks, then it’s likely you will need to clean your cold room more frequently to prevent contamination. 

• Industry-specific cold room requirements

This relates to specific industries that require consistency and control over their cold rooms and cold room elements, for example, the pharmaceutical industry.

• The time of year

For most businesses, there are certain periods of the year that are typically busier than others, such as Christmas and Easter. Naturally, your cold rooms will see an increase in stock levels and foot/vehicle traffic during these periods and will require more frequent cleaning. 

• The geographical location of your cold rooms

Certain geographical locations can impact how often you will need to clean your cold rooms. If your cold room is modular or external, you will need to clean your cold room structure more frequently because of being in contact with the weather.

Plus, if your cold room is close to the coast, erosion and rusting is likely to occur more frequently, so you will need to complete increased visual checks and cleaning sessions to keep this under control.

How often should you clean your cold room?

As a minimum, you should clean your cold rooms at least once a month. For a more hygienic finish or if you are part of an industry that has stricter guidelines, you might need to clean more regularly.

Likewise, if you notice a leak or spillage in your cold rooms, then this should be cleaned immediately to prevent the situation from escalating. 

2.     Visual inspections

Often carried out alongside cleaning, visual inspections are a large consideration in cold room operation and maintenance.

Doing so allows you to spot issues before they become big problems and carry out refurbishment as needed.

This can include:

• Noticing frost and ice build up
• Considering condensation pockets
• Monitoring the performance of refrigeration systems – and booking in servicing or refurbishment when needed

It also allows you to ensure the cold room doors and inner lining curtains are being closed when they are supposed to. It can be tempting for staff to leave them open, but doing so can be expensive, put your refrigeration systems under undue pressure, and increase the likelihood of hotspots or temperature fluctuations, so instances need to be kept to an absolute minimum.

3.     Replacing parts as needed

If you have identified certain parts or components during your visual inspections or cleaning rotations as being damaged or broken, now is the time to replace them.

While it can differ depending on your business, the most common need for replacement involves:

• Cold room door gaskets
• Cold room doors
• Door frame liners
• Cold room door handles

These parts work in conjunction to keep refrigerated air in and allow for safe access and egress, making them essential for the performance of your business and the health and safety of your team. 

• Internal cold room curtains – both insulated and non-insulated
• Floor-mounted guide shoes and door-mounted guide rails
• Heater systems

These are found in freezer cold rooms and include heater tape, junction boxes, and transformers, stopping ice tracking and build-up.

• Top rollers

Once you have identified which parts need fixing or replacing, you can then get to work using your in-house stock of spare parts!

Why Keep a Stock of Spare Parts for Your Cold Room

While it can take a little organisation, keeping a stock of spare parts specifically for cool room repair can mean:

• Business interruptions are minimised

As delays can be handled promptly, without delay, it’s much easier and faster to get back to business as usual

• Large interruptions are minimised

While breakages can sneak up on any business at any time, keeping the most likely parts in stock can allow for smaller, faster repairs that stop the progression of further damage.

• Stock isn’t damaged

Parts essential to the cooling process help to keep temperature-controlled stock, including refrigeration systems or cold room panels themselves, ensuring stock doesn’t spoil – reducing further business losses.

To find spares for your site, shop UK Cold Room Spares today! If you don’t know what you need, we can find replacements using a photo message!

What Is Cold Room Refurbishment?

A good rule of thumb is that if one or two components need repairing or replacing, and this can be done without significant downtime as part of regular cold room maintenance. If, on the other hand, multiple components are at fault, then a larger-scale cold room refurbishment is what you need.

If you choose MTCSS to help transform your tired and inefficient cold room into an optimally working and aesthetic cold storage solution via a refurbishment, we’ll first undertake a site survey to understand what needs to be done in order.

As part of this, we’ll assess the cold room repairs required by reviewing various elements of your walk-in rooms, including:

• The cold room door – To see what cold room door furniture needs replacing, from cold room door handles and handle parts to door gaskets and profiles. MTCSS has spares & parts available on our e-commerce shop, click here to see more!
• The cold room panels for walls and ceilings – To make sure the insulation properties are maintained. If there is minor damage, such as dents, hygienic planking and wall protecting can be overlaid to protect the cold room panels and improve the aesthetics.
• The cold room floor – If there is minor damage to floor panels or the surface is uneven, non-slip sheets can be overlaid to improve the safety, appearance, and cleanliness.
• Lighting and seals – The MTCSS team will also check the lighting and sealing of the room and ensure everything is safe.

How Impactful Is Cold Room Refurbishment?

If you don’t have an in-house team to handle cold room repairs or refurbishment, it can seem like you are facing a losing battle.

However, with help from the experienced team at MTCSS, we can offer cold room repairs, scheduled cold room maintenance, and refurbishment, depending on your needs.

As such, cold room refurbishment can spruce up your existing cold room for you, bringing a wide and varied range of benefits, including:

• Improving the efficiency of your walk-in fridge or freezer cold room, its aesthetics, and its safety,
• Ensuring it adheres to health and safety requirements
• Reducing your energy costs and your impact on the environment

The amount of impact the refurbishment process brings will differ depending on what needs to be done to get it back up to scratch. However, by working in partnership with you, we can ensure refurbishment is completed on a date that impacts your business the least and is completed as soon as possible.

We’ll discuss this with you as part of the quotation process, so you will know exactly what to expect.

Cold Room Replacement

If your bespoke or modular cold room is beyond the state of repair, a refurbishment won’t be viable. At this point, cold room replacement is your only option.

Signs your cold room needs to be replaced include:

• Large gauges in the panels which effect the cold room insulation
• Cold room panels are delaminating – where the steel skin starts to pull away from the foam core, affecting the insulation properties
• The cold room door may be damaged beyond repair
• The cold room floor or ceiling may be deeply damaged or coming away

While considered a last resort, removing and replacing your failing cold room will take more time and can lead to a few days without fulfilling business operations. However, we’ll do all we can to minimise the impact and get your new cold room installed as soon as possible.

Feel free to contact us for a quote to find out more about what the process might look like for your site.

For cold room maintenance, refurbishment, or repairs – contact MTCSS

While sometimes approached with trepidation, routine cold room maintenance needn’t be a thing that causes great concern.

It can save you time and money, whilst ensuring your walk-in chiller or freezer cold room is working efficiently, remains aesthetic in appearance, and adheres to health and safety requirements. Plus, it’s all simple stuff most in-house teams can manage by themselves.

However, if you don’t have a team or need more extensive cold room refurbishment or replacement, MTCSS can help.

For a survey of your current cold room, email us at sales@mtcss.co.uk or fill in an enquiry form, and we’ll be in touch as soon as we can.