St Albans
March 2022
£25k - £50k
Design, supply & installation of Walk In in Chillstore
Intro on Client and clients requirements
A national pharmaceutical wholesaler with coverage throughout the UK required a new chill store (also known as cold room) at their St Albans site.
The cold room was used to store pharmaceutical products which needed to be maintained within the MHRA guidelines of 2°C to 8°C.
Why the client needs ICE
The site had an existing chillstores onsite which they had outgrown. The client required a new larger chillstore to accommodate their expansions plans.
Our scope of works was to build a new walk-in cold room, including all insulated walls, doors and ceilings, together with the design, supply and installation refrigeration systems to provide a temperature-controlled environment of between 2°C and 8°C. The temperature was to be maintained 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
It was a requirement for the new refrigeration systems to provide a fully flexible run and standby operation.
LED lighting and emergency lighting was to be provided within the new chillstore.
Once in operation the chillstore was to be temperature mapped to ensure that the room temperature doesn’t to fall out of the specified parameters.
Our Director Nick Griffiths surveyed the site recording the building layout, confirmed the required size of the new enclosure and confirmed details with the client such as the number of people working in the space, product type, entry temperatures, reduction times and product turnover.
Detailed heatload calculations were undertaken for the new enclosure and our equipment was selected based the results.
The new walk-in chillstore built was approx. 7.50m long x 5.10m wide, with a height of 3.50m.
The main access to the coldstore was via a 1.5m x 2.0m manual sliding door to allow for the input of pallets and a 1.0m x 2.0m pedestrian door.
Each door was fitted with a door switch which would alarm locally after a pre set and adjustable period of time of around 30 seconds of the door being left open.
To serve the above enclosure, we selected and installed two independent, direct expansion refrigeration systems operating on R449A refrigerant, utilising fully housed packaged condensing units and ceiling mounted evaporator coolers.
Each installed system would be capable of maintaining the desired room temperature in the event of a failure the other system or whilst the other is defrosting. This provided a fully flexible run and standby operation for the room.
The condensing units installed were Danfoss Optyma Plus packaged units, that contain a Danfoss scroll compressor, integral condenser, fans, filter drier, sight glass and automatic safety controls. In the event of a fault condition, the controller on the units would display specific fault codes to identify the issue precisely, as well as sending a fault signal to the internal control panel.
The evaporator coolers were of copper tube/aluminium fin construction and were manufactured by Searle/Kelvion.
All refrigeration pipe work was supported using standard insulated pipe clamps.
Volt free contacts were provided within our controls to interface with the clients BMS alarm system.
Energy efficient LED lighting was installed by our electrical contractors E and A Electrical Ltd and operated via a PIR sensor. Emergency lighting was also installed.
This project was designed and run by our Managing Director Nick Griffiths and installed by our in-house installation team lead by our onsite supervisor Daniel Bush.
The project was handed over to the client in March 2022 with as built drawings, commissioning reports and O&M manuals.
All installed systems were installed to the highest of standards and are performing well.
Since commissioning the room has performed well and have stayed within the specified temperature limits of between 2°C and 8°C.
We are ready to help with your air conditioning, refrigeration and ventilation enquiries.
If you have an enquiry, please complete the contact form and our team will be in touch. We look forward to hearing from you and look forward to building a winning partnership