Cold rooms are an essential part of any commercial kitchen, but they can also be used in labs or other applications. If you have a large number of items that must be kept cool, you’ll want a place to put them. A cold room is an ideal solution.
One of the biggest questions people face is what size of cold room do they need? While you may feel that bigger is better, that’s not always the case. For example, you don’t want to cool large amounts of space where you have no products. At the same time, you do want to allow for possible expansion in the future. So, how do you determine the best size of cold room for your building?
Existing Space
First, you’ll need to look at how much space you actually have. It’s impossible to plan a five-metre square room when you only have three metres available. The amount of space that is actually available is going to be a major factor.
Circulation
It’s important to have the cold air circulate around the room. For many businesses, this means hanging some items or at the very least, using shelves that are more racks than anything. This allows air to move through the racks and around the products rather than being stopped by flat shelving. The more the air moves, the fast it can freeze.
Products
The next thing to consider is how much you have to store in the cold room. Ideally, you should be able to place everything you have in the room comfortably, with space for ventilation between products.
You should be tracking all your incoming and outgoing products, which will let you know what the peak capacity will be. This is the most that will be stored if you have minimal output and a large order comes in. You don’t want to leave anything outside the cold room!
Other Cooling Spaces
Do you have freezers and fridges, as well? If you intend to continue using these, they should be considered when figuring out the amount of product to store in the cold room. You’ll be moving things in and out anyway, so this may reduce the capacity of the space.
The engineer who designs the cold room is the best person to talk to about dimensions. They won’t know your business as well as you, so have the information necessary available to them.
Need a cold room built? Mitchell’s can handle the job for you and keep up with maintenance on an ongoing basis, too.