In food service, commercial food production, and even agriculture, freezers play a critical role in safe, successful operations — just as much as walk-in refrigerators, if not more so. With efficient freezers, long-term cold storage is a cost-effective proposition that allows you to keep products stable and ready for use without short-term concerns about spoilage. However, the key word here is “efficient.” Because freezers must maintain such low temperatures, any warm air that enters the freezer creates an imbalance that requires a correction.
In storage areas that are only occasionally accessed, this may not be much of an issue. In restaurants and other operations where products are placed in or removed from the freezer multiple times a day (or even each hour), freezer units must work overtime to keep the product chilled. As a result, the equipment experiences wear and tear at a much higher rate while also consuming far more electricity than a well-insulated freezer that only needs to work occasionally to maintain the temperature. If a freezer goes down, it can be an emergency — so finding ways to mitigate that risk and ensure the longevity of your units is essential.
Freezer door air curtains offer the most effective solution to this problem in one compact package. Sometimes used to help keep restaurant patrons more comfortable in dining areas with doors that frequently open outside, air curtains can lend their usefulness to freezer applications as well. No matter the size of the freezer or the number of separate freezer doors you must cover, air curtains can help you save money, preserve products, and follow a more predictable maintenance scheme. How?
Why Air Curtains Help Freezers Stay Cold
The best place to start for an answer to that question is with a quick refresher in high school physics: heat always wants to spread to zones of lower energy. In other words, hot air will always seek to displace cold air. You may not even think of the air outside the freezer as “hot” — to you, it’s just room temperature. However, as soon as the freezer door opens, that air will tend to flow into the cooled space due to the stark difference. During busy times, the door may be left open to facilitate quick unloading of product to the regular refrigerator. The result is a severe rise in the interior temperature of the freezer and correspondingly longer cooling cycle times.
An air curtain, placed above the entrance to the freezer and set up to automatically activate when the door opens, helps to halt this process. Using a sheet of air that exhibits “laminar flow,” which means the air currents all travel in a uniform direction, the unit effectively divides the inside and outside spaces with an invisible wall. This stream of air forces any warm air trying to infiltrate the space to the floor and minimizes the exchange. Likewise, cold air from inside the freezer has a more difficult time escaping when the air curtain runs. The result is a vastly reduced impact on temperature stability and a freezer that can maintain its efficiency with greater ease.
Common Problems You’ll Avoid with an Air Curtain
Alongside reducing the rate at which your freezer consumes energy throughout the year, air curtains help to tackle other common problems. For example, consider the previous example concerning leaving the door open for loading and unloading the freezer. With an air curtain running, staff can accomplish this task without subjecting other items to unnecessary temperature abuse. The result is a smoother, safer workflow that does not have a negative impact.
Air curtains have secondary benefits aside from helping drive down energy usage and prolonging the life of your freezer equipment; they can also help keep the interior of the cold storage space cleaner. The same air stream that keeps hot air from reaching your stock will also prevent airborne debris such as dust from entering the freezer, helping to reduce maintenance and cleaning needs and fostering a more hygienic food storage area that can largely be left alone. For freezers located near the back of house exterior doors, air curtains can also help to prevent flying insects, such as common flies, from finding their way into the space.
Securing the Appropriate Air Curtains for Your Business
A quick look at the many benefits air curtains can bring to business when installed over freezer doors reveals their inherent value. As a cost-effective solution, they have no equal in terms of the ability to safeguard your investment and keep mission-critical equipment such as freezers ready for action day after day. It’s worth noting, however, that they can find many other applications throughout your space as well, such as over exterior doors, walk-in refrigerators, and other areas. Each of these use cases allows you to manage the energy consumption of your business better — especially because air curtains use comparatively little electricity next to air conditioners and furnaces.
Sizing an air curtain for freezer doors correctly is simple; your core focus will be to provide adequate coverage for the entire width of the door, ensuring that there are no gaps from which air can leak or escape to ensure a good “seal.” The height from the floor also plays an important role, as it will determine how powerful a curtain you require. Shorter heights need less power; taller doors require stronger motors to allow the air to reach the floor at the correct speed and pressure. Using professional assistance can make the task of sizing your hardware much more straightforward.
At Air Door Distributors, we combine years of industry experience with an extensive catalog of hardware produced by leaders such as Mars and Berner to offer our clients unparalleled access to this technology. With our assistance, sizing equipment and determining the best options for installation are easy. To discover the appropriate size air curtain for your walk-in freezer and to uncover more information, please reach out to our team today.