New Refrigeration on Used Walk-ins – Is it EISA compliant?

The Department of Energy (DOE) has written their interpretation on compliant refrigeration vs. non-compliant refrigeration on walk-in coolers and freezers. Below, DOE explains that any component added to a previously installed walk-in cooler or freezer and manufactured after January 1, 2009, must meet EISA guidelines. This is a draft document and comments and suggestions must be submitted to the Department of Energy prior to February 20, 2012.

The Interpretation from the Department of Energy (DOE)

This is a draft document and does not represent a definitive view of the agency on the questions addressed.

This and other guidance documents are accessible on the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy web site at: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/guidance/default.aspx?pid=2&spid=1.

Guidance Type: Conservation Standards, Enforcement
Category: Commercial Equipment
Product: Walk-in Cooler and Walk-in Freezers
Guidance Version: DRAFT
Issued: January 20, 2012
Comment Period Closes: February 20, 2012

Q: What are the relevant dates for compliance with the prescriptive requirements for walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers? For example: If a newly manufactured component of a walk-in cooler or walk-in freezer is installed in a walk-in box manufactured prior to January 1, 2009, does it have to comply with the prescriptive requirements of 10 C.F.R. § 431.306?

A: The following is a draft U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) guidance document regarding commercial walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers. This draft guidance document represents the Department’s interpretation of its existing regulations and is exempt from the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. See 5 U.S.C. § 553(b)(A). Therefore, the Department is accepting comments and suggestions from the public until February 20, 2012. Comments and suggestions should be provided in WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, PDF, or text file format by sending an email to WICFEISA2007Guidance-2012-0001{at}ee.doe.gov. Please also include the docket number EERE-2012-BT-STD0001.

At the end of the comment period, this draft guidance document may be adopted, revised or withdrawn. Read the rest of this entry »

Troubleshooting Defrost Problems

When troubleshooting walk-in freezers, technicians often find a frozen evaporator coil. Although there are several possible causes, one common cause involves the defrost system. For some reason, the system is not properly defrosting the evaporator’s coil on a regular basis. In order to effectively troubleshoot this problem, a technician must understand the design and operation of the defrost systems typically used.

One popular method of defrosting walk-in freezers is the electric defrost system. This is comprised of several components, including a defrost timer, resistive heater(s), defrost termination switch, fan cycling control, and drain line heater. An electric resistance heater is placed on the outer surface of the evaporator’s coils. The energized heater supplies enough heat to completely defrost the coils.

The resistive heaters used on a typical electric defrost system are sized to provide sufficient heat to effectively defrost the coil’s surface. Their capacity is normally rated in watts per foot. They are shaped to fit snugly onto the coil surface, creating efficient heat transfer during defrosts.

Most heaters are manufactured for a specific coil, and when replacing these heaters it is best to obtain the OEM replacement. Universal defrost heaters are available, but matching their wattage and shape may be difficult.

A defrost timer controls the entire defrost operation. It initiates the defrost cycle, controls the operation of the compressor and defrost heaters, and is part of the defrost termination. Defrost timers can be adjusted to initiate defrost from just once a day to several times a day.

The actual number of defrosts per day depends upon the location of the walk-in. Walk-in freezers are usually designed to defrost once or twice a day. The more humid and warm a location, the more defrosts will be needed. If a system needs to be defrosted more frequently, add only one additional defrost period at a time and monitor the results. Adding too many defrost periods will not be beneficial to the system or the customer.

In a common wiring diagram for a time-initiated, temperature-terminated electric defrost system the time motor (TM) is energized continuously. Normally closed contacts 2-4 of the defrost timer are wired in series with the compressor and the evaporator fan motor (EFM). Normally open contacts 1-3 are wired in series with the electric defrost heaters and the timer release solenoid (TRS).

The timer motor controls the operation of contacts 2-4 and 1-3. They work opposite each other. When contacts 2-4 are closed, 1-3 are opened. When contacts 2-4 are opened, 1-3 are closed. When the timer motor initiates a defrost, contacts 2-4 will open and 1-3 will close. This stops the compressor and the evaporator fan motor, and energizes the defrost heaters. Read the rest of this entry »

Give Your Walk-in a Walkthrough

Walk-in coolers and freezers: When is the last time you went into your property’s walk-in cooler unannounced? If you haven’t done it in a while, you might be surprised. I recently had the experience where an excellent GM asked me to identify opportunity areas in the kitchen operation. I went through the walk-in coolers and freezers and found the following issues within the first 10-minute visual inspection:

• 

  Make sure you have an inventory management process in place.

  Walk-in freezer that was very poorly lit (read: hard to find items), with boxes of frozen foods that had not been dated. Clearly without a date, it is hard to employ the First-in, First-out (FIFO) method of inventory management. How do we know when that box of chicken wings on the bottom of the stack came in? It is possible the box on the bottom is living there in perpetuity while new inventory is stacked on top every week?

• Food items stored unwrapped, with no date, in non-translucent storage pans and hotel pans. In one instance, two different products were in the same tray: one was uncooked raw chicken breast stored at an angle so the blood was running into unwrapped Canadian bacon. In a cruel moment of irony, just that morning I had been in the hotel’s restaurant outlet and sat next to four female business travelers who all ordered the eggs benedict for breakfast. When I eventually asked the sous chef (the executive chef was off at the time) what was going on, there was a general lack of awareness and training about the dangers of such poor food handling and the improper storage methods. The acts and non-acts were not malicious; rather it was a training and education issue. Oh, and he thought buying Lexans for storage purposes was too expensive for the GM to approve.
• Soup stored unwrapped in a large container sitting on the floor directly under the cooler’s condenser unit that was dripping water condensation into the soup. Read the rest of this entry »

New Jersey Steak House Goes Above and Beyond on Food Safety

When David Walzog got the go-ahead to design the kitchen for Strip House at The Westminster Hotel in Livingston, N.J., the executive chef’s wish list drew on his experiences working at the Monkey Bar and Michael Jordan’s The Steak House N.Y.C., both in New York City.

Walzog insisted on 14 sets of refrigerated drawers—where food is held below 40F—for mise en place. Several drawers were installed on the line, providing more space for plate assembly and enabling 14 cooks to keep surfaces clean and orderly.

Drawers and gaskets are cleaned daily, and twice a week they’re disassembled for bleaching. The quarry tile floor in the kitchen is graded and easy to hose down and power wash, he says.

Strip House’s five walk-in coolers are extra-spacious. The lowest shelf is 10 inches off the floor, two inches higher than health codes mandate, Walzog says, to facilitate mopping and cleaning. Rubber-coated shelving resists rust and cleans and moves easily to accommodate a variety of bin sizes. Safety glass and wire grating enclose two pairs of fluorescent bulbs for ceiling light. Read the rest of this entry »

Diagnosing Walk-in Coolers & Freezers Problems

A systematic approach to walk-in cooler and freezer maintenance is the technician’s best guide.

The ubiquitous walk-in cooler or freezer is an essential part of many cafeterias, restaurants and convenience stores. It is also a large energy user in these facilities but is rarely considered until problems emerge.

Problems include failure to maintain pressure and compressor failure, both of which can result in expensive losses to the products stored in the cooler. These problems, as well as unnecessarily high energy use, can be avoided by observing equipment and taking corrective action.

Evaporators
Moisture from the air freezes onto the evaporator coils (the cooling coils in the freezer) and forms an insulating barrier to heat transfer. Airflow also decreases as the passages narrow due to ice buildup. Each evaporator has a defrost cycle to melt frost/ice that has built up on the evaporator coils. Water from the melted ice is drained from the freezer . . . ideally. Read the rest of this entry »

Polyurethane: One More Option For Your Walk-in

It’s Your Choice.

U.S. Cooler is one of the few manufacturers who can now offer both extruded polystyrene and foamed-in-place polyurethane insulation for walk-in coolers and freezers. As any good business does, we are always seeking new ways to serve our customers better and stay competitive in the marketplace. One of these ways is to provide additional services to our customers and dealers. Recently, we have added foamed-in-place polyurethane to our product offering. Previously, U.S. Cooler only offered extruded polystyrene insulation.

U.S. Cooler’s new polyurethane panels are foamed-in-place filled with class 1 polyurethane foam made from CFC and HFC free materials. By utilizing state of the art horizontal presses and technology, panels lie flat during the foaming process which reduces voids in the insulation. The panels’ structural tongue and groove, cam-locking system provides an air-tight seal between the panels restricting air infiltration into the insulation core.

U.S. Cooler’s polyurethane walk-in products are made with the same exceptional quality and performance construction that has proven successful in the industry.  By adding a new product line to our manufacturing capabilities our product excellence has not changed.  U.S. Cooler still provides the same premium, high-quality products and customer service we have been offering for over 25 years. Every walk-in is pre-assembled in our manufacturing facility before shipment to ensure precise quality control and ease of assembly in the field. All our panels come with our standard 10 year warranty.

Polystyrene Walk-in Brochure

Polyurethane Walk-in Brochure

DOE Final Test Procedure Ruling Could Affect You

The EISA 2007 document required that performance based standards for walk-in coolers and freezers be published no later than January 1, 2012. The first step to completing the new walk-in cooler and freezer standards is to finalize the testing procedure.  This has now been completed and published. The next step is to publish the standards, which determines the required performance results of the mandatory tests.

The final test procedures for testing walk-in coolers and freezers have been finalized and released. There are test procedures for panels, doors and refrigeration systems.  The tests that have been adopted are designed to produce test results that reflect energy efficiency, energy use and estimated operating costs for industrial equipment.

DOE has finally made a ruling on definitions that were unclear in previous documents. The most important ruling that affects our dealers is who is now considered the manufacturer.

Manufacturer of a walk-in cooler or walk-in freezer means any person who:

1. Manufactures a component of a walk-in cooler or walk-in freezer that affects energy consumption, including, but not limited to, refrigeration, doors, lights, windows, or walls;

Or

1. Manufactures or assembles the complete walk-in cooler or walk-in freezer (76 FR 12504).

This definition extends the compliance responsibility to both the component manufacturer and the assembler. In the final rule, DOE clarified that the component manufacturer would be the entity responsible for certifying compliance of the components they manufacture for walk-in applications. The manufacturer is responsible for the products they manufacture. If a manufacturer puts the entire system together, including the walk-in and refrigeration, the manufacturer is responsible for the equipment to meet federal standards. Read the rest of this entry »

Time is Running out for Foodservice Equipment Tax Incentives

You have eight months left this year to secure important tax perks for purchasing new equipment. If you are thinking of replacing your walk-in cooler or freezer, now may be the time to act. The Small Business Act that President Obama put in place in September 2010 provides tax relief and assistance in gaining access to capital for foodservice operations.

The legislation allows foodservice operators to write off up to $500,000 of equipment costs immediately rather than recovering the purchase over multiple year of depreciation. The equipment purchase must be completed during the 2011 tax year.

Check out our New Equipment Tax Breaks post from November 2010 for more information.

The Downside of Open Air Refrigerated Display Cases

Open air refrigerated display cases commonly seen in grocery stores can provide easy access to products for customers. The main problem with these refrigerators is that they are constantly fighting the ambient air, causing their refrigeration units to work much harder than if they were enclosed. They also increase heating bills for grocery stores in the winter as they constantly dump cold air into the heated building. Grocery stores are starting to catch on to the benefits of walk-in coolers and substituting glass-door merchandising walk-ins and walk-in dairy rooms for these cases. The following article details the energy saving efforts of a grocery store chain in Britain.

Makro is to install walk-in dairy rooms at 17 of its 30 cash & carries by the end of the year.

The move is part of an energy saving drive which will enable pubs to source supplies with a smaller carbon footprint. The dairy rooms save energy compared to fridges and chillers in the main store area. Read the rest of this entry »

Passing Restaurant Inspections for your Walk-in Cooler or Walk-in Freezer

Restaurants are supposed to be checked by health inspectors twice a year. Walk-ins can be a source of food safety violations if not properly maintained and cleaned. If you run a restaurant you can also be stuck with fines totaling thousands of dollars or face temporary closure of your establishment. After the restaurant is closed, an inspector will generally return within 24 hours and will continue to visit until these violations are resolved and the restaurant can reopen.¹ Lost days of operation can cost your business not only revenue, but your reputation as well.

One restaurant in New York paid a total of $8,600 in fines from a food inspection, including $1,200 directly relating to their poorly maintained walk-in cooler.

· $600 – The walk-in cooler was dripping water from the ceiling. Ice build-up on the condenser was present in the walk-in freezer dripping into extra ice storage in a garbage can below. Shelving in multiple refrigeration units was rusted and therefore not easy to clean and particles of rust able to flake off into food products below. The condensation line for the cooler was not connected and the condensate was dripping into a pan at the bottom of the unit.

· $600 – The floor in the walk-in cooler was in disrepair and no longer an easy to clean surface.²

Health code regulations and requirements vary from state to state. The following are areas you could be cited for in your walk-in or other refrigerators:

Lack of interior release in walk-in.

Spoiled or improperly packaged food in your walk-in.

Any spills or pieces of food in the walk-in not cleaned up.

Mold present in the walk-in cooler.

Refrigeration unit poorly ventilated and in close proximity to combustibles.

Walk-in not held at the proper temperature for food storage.

Improper organization of the walk-in or obstructions in the area around it, making it hard to service or clean. Read the rest of this entry »