Two cold rooms can be exactly the same size and need completely different refrigeration. One holds boxed drinks and is opened twice a day. The other takes warm deliveries every morning, is opened every few minutes and sits next to a hot kitchen. Choose the plant by size alone and one of them will struggle.
That is why every room we design starts with a heat load calculation: an engineering assessment of all the heat the refrigeration must remove, on your busiest day, not on an average one.
Start with your room. Draw it with Yutab, our free online cold room designer, and tell us what you store. Design your room with Yutab →
Where the heat comes from
The product
Goods arriving warmer than the room bring heat with them. The more you load at once, and the warmer it arrives, the more the refrigeration has to do, and the faster it has to do it.
Door openings
Every time the door opens, warm, moist air flows in. In a busy kitchen or warehouse this can be one of the largest loads of all, and it also brings in the moisture that turns into ice.
People and lighting
Staff working inside and lights that stay on all add heat. Small on their own, significant over a working day.
The building
Heat comes through the walls, ceiling and floor. A room next to a kitchen, in a hot roof space or above a heated basement faces a very different load from one in a cool warehouse.
The equipment itself
Fans, defrost heaters and door frame heaters add their own heat, and the system has to remove that too.
What goes wrong without a proper calculation
- Undersized plant: the room cannot pull down after a delivery, runs warm in summer and the compressor never rests. Read why a cold room gets warm.
- Oversized plant: short cycling, poor humidity control, higher purchase cost and more wear.
- Ice and frost: door and moisture loads that were not planned for end up on the evaporator and the floor.
- High energy bills: a system that is always struggling is never efficient.
What you get from our approach
- Refrigeration matched to how your business actually works
- Fast recovery after deliveries and busy periods
- Stable temperatures that protect stock and keep you compliant
- Lower running costs and longer equipment life
- A room that still copes on the hottest day of the year
Our methods are our own, built from many years of designing, building and repairing cold rooms. What matters to you is the result: a room that holds temperature when it counts.
How it fits into a project
The heat load is worked out after the site survey, from what we measured and what you told us about your business. It then drives the choice of refrigeration plant, evaporator and controls in our cold room design. For room size and storage capacity, read how to plan cold room capacity and how to size a freezer room properly.
Planning a cold room or freezer room? Request a site survey or quotation or call free on 0800 772 0333.
Design your cold room online with Yutab
Yutab is the UK Coldroom online cold room designer. It is free to use and takes no payment. Draw your room, save it, download the PDF design sheet and send it to our engineers. Tell us what you store and how often the door opens: it helps us with the load.
See our featured projects, our cold room design and installation service and the site survey where we collect the information for the calculation.
Frequently asked questions
Why can’t you just choose a unit by room size?
Because size is only one part of the load. Product, door openings and the surroundings often matter more.
My existing room struggles in summer. Is it undersized?
It may be, but dirty condensers, worn door seals and changes in how the room is used are also common causes. We check before recommending new plant.
Do you calculate the load for freezer rooms too?
Yes. Every cold room, freezer room and blast chiller we design.