Walk-in coolers are a fundamentally essential component for restaurants and commercial kitchens everywhere. Without them, there would simply be no way to store on-site the amount of perishable products necessary to maintain smooth operations each day. Maintaining the right temperature inside the walk-in is critical not just for customer satisfaction, but also for compliance with food safety regulations.
That’s often easier said than done, though, especially during the busiest periods of service when staff may go in and out of the walk-in very frequently. The result: hot air from the kitchen rushes in, and cold air rushes out, creating a temperature imbalance. The walk-in’s chillers must then turn back on to cope with the change. How can you better manage this challenge? An air curtain for the walk-in could be precisely what your business needs. Consider how.
Why use an air curtain for a walk-in?
The substantial temperature difference between the interior of the walk-in and the workspaces outside is responsible for how rapidly the temperature can change when the door opens. Recall that hot air rises and cold air sinks. When you open the door to the walk in, cold air begins to rapidly sink and flow outward, displacing the warmer air outside. This warmer air then rises to the top of the walk-in, which can raise the temperature in the upper spaces by as much as 30 degrees or more. That requires a substantial amount of energy to cool down again.
An air curtain prevents this mixing and displacement from occurring at all. By using a jet stream of air to divide the areas in two, only a small amount of cold air will escape. Meanwhile, no hot air whatsoever will rise into the walk-in. A small area near the front of the cooler may spike in temperature briefly, but not to the same degree as it would without an air curtain.
The energy it takes to operate an air curtain, which only runs when the walk-in door is open, typically works out to be far less than what it requires to re-chill a cooler. This way, you can maintain temperatures efficiently even during the busiest periods of the workday. Because air curtains for these applications also include filters for air sanitation, there are no worries about introducing exterior contamination into the walk-in, either. Just as the curtain keeps hot air out, it also excludes smoke and other airborne particles.
Improving productivity without impacting food safety
Through the technological advantage that air curtains provide over other solutions such as hanging plastic strips, any food service establishment can gain the ability to improve their walk-in cooler’s efficiency. At Air Door Distributors, we proudly coordinate with our clients to understand your property’s specific needs. Through this understanding, we can suggest the ideal air curtain model for achieving the desired results. To find out how to do that, or to learn more about just how much more efficient your walk-in could be, please send us a message or give us a call today.
