Why Maintain your Commercial Fridges
Picture the scene: it’s Halloween weekend. Your pub, restaurant or hotel is filled to bursting with merrymakers and someone complains that their white wine isn’t very cold. Another complains that their bottled beer isn’t cold either. You go to grab a bottle from the fridge and realise that nothing in there is very cold. The fridge has conked out. Even worse, a fridge containing food in the kitchen has died and the food is starting to go off.
This is a nightmare scenario for any publican, restaurateur or hotelier but, fortunately, it’s largely preventable. Maintaining your fridges and freezers can significantly reduce the risk of them breaking down when you need them most. Well maintained fridges are also more energy efficient so doing this properly and regularly will help to cut down your electricity bills. Here are some ways fridge maintenance can help prevent break downs:
Cleaning
So many problems in fridges begin with components like the condenser coil or fans becoming dirty and then clogged. Blocked condenser coils will overheat which results in the compressor working twice as hard to keep the fridge cool. Not only is this very inefficient, it also overworks the system which can cause it to fail. Condenser coils, fans and compressors generally last a long time if they’re regularly maintained but they can be replaced if necessary. Evaporator coils and fans can also become dirty and clogged which causes them to stop working. Regular maintenance will clean all these parts to prevent failures occurring due to dirt clogging.
Monitoring
Parts do sometimes wear out and fail due to other causes though so another benefit of regular maintenance is spotting potential issues before they become serious. If parts look worn or loose, or something is making an odd noise or just not doing what it should, we can address that problem and fix it before it can lead to more damage and become more difficult and expensive to fix.
Advice
People sometimes do things that shorten the life of their fridges or cause them to not run as well as they could. When we perform regular maintenance, we can spot these types of practices such as positioning the fridge in such a way that its fans or vents are blocked or overloading them so the air can’t circulate properly or they’re simply having to work too hard to keep everything cold and give advice for how to do things differently to maximise the life of the fridge and minimise the chances of them breaking down.
