THE IMPORTANCE OF AN HERMETICITY OF COLD – ROOM DOOR

In the past years, we’ve collected a remarkable experience over what happens to cold-room insulated panels, cold-room doors, and fittings after the installation. The range of applications is wide enough to cover the vast majority of cases of post-installation failures in many countries.

The cold storage door is the entrance point to the refrigeration room, is the active part of the building. In some cases, we open them only a few times per day. In other, the cold-room doors keep opening and closing all day. Why can this activity be an issue? Because of the essential requirement that is involved in a cold-room: hermeticity. 

Hermeticity means that there is no contact between the internal environment and the external. Of course, when we open cold storage, we break the hermeticity, but we restore it when we close the door.

So, how come that we can endanger the hermeticity of a cold-room door? Let’s see the most common causes:

Rubber gaskets seal the door and prevent air leakage. They must be soft enough to adapt to the frame shape to seal it. Its softness is their weak point.: when the gasket breaks, we must fix it immediately.

Workers pull locks and handle several times per day, sometimes in the wrong way, causing them to break. A broken handle will force you to keep the door a bit open, wasting energy and creating ice buildups.

Driving a forklift at a -30C (-22F) can be complicated; sometimes, slippery floors can cause hits to cold-room doors. If the hit is severe, we might not be able to open/close the door anymore.

If we leave the door open, cold-air will cause ice formation on the back and the sides of the cold-room doors. That ice won’t melt easily, and will gradually increase and eventually block the door. Prevention is essential: teach your workers how to use the cold-room doors correctly.

If the doors are big, consider adding automation. Run the maintenance regularly: try to take the ice away if you spot it. Add flexible door protections: they will prevent damage to the doors. Keep a small stock at hand: gaskets, handles, and heating cables.