Cooling and refrigeration for warehouses and logistics sites
Distribution buildings are large, leaky and full of moving equipment, so blanket cooling is neither practical nor affordable. The realistic scope is targeted: site offices, mezzanine pods, control rooms, comms cabinets and any chilled or frozen storage.
The scheduling problem is bigger than the engineering one. Sites run shifts, bays are busy all day, and a plant shutdown at the wrong hour stops a dispatch.
We plan around the operation, which is why warehouse contracts are usually written with agreed isolation windows in them.
Office pods and mezzanines
Pods are the classic warehouse cooling asset. They are added after the shell was built, they sit under a roof that gets very hot, and they usually have nowhere sensible for a condenser.
Getting them right is mostly a siting problem: condenser position, pipe route, condensate fall and enough clearance for the unit to reject heat rather than recirculate it.
Chilled and frozen storage
- Walk in chill and freeze rooms sized for bulk delivery peaks
- Dock and dispatch area temperature control
- Door discipline, curtains and air curtains, which decide more than the plant does
- Data logging and alarms for unattended overnight periods
- F-Gas leak checks driven by charge size, which is often substantial on this plant
Comms, control and charging rooms
Warehouse management systems sit in a cabinet or a small room that nobody thinks about until the pick stops. Battery charging areas generate real heat and have ventilation requirements of their own.
Both are worth ranking as critical on a maintenance schedule, because the cost of a failure is measured in stopped operations rather than discomfort.
Working around the operation
- Visits booked against shift changeover rather than office hours
- Yard access, banksman and FLT interaction agreed in advance
- Working at height planned with the site's own permit system
- Isolation windows written into the contract, not negotiated on the day
- Multi site operators quoted as one schedule
FAQs
Common questions
Can you air condition an entire warehouse?
Technically yes, practically almost never. The building volume and air leakage make it enormously expensive to run. Targeted cooling of offices, pods, control rooms and storage delivers the outcome people actually want for a fraction of the cost.
Why does our office pod overheat even with air conditioning?
Usually because the condenser is in still, hot air under the roof and is recirculating its own discharge, or because the unit was sized for the floor area without allowing for the heat coming through the pod roof from the warehouse above it.
Do you work on refrigerated storage as well as comfort cooling?
Yes, and on distribution sites it is usually the larger part of the contract. Cold rooms, freezer rooms, dock chill and the associated alarms and logging all sit on the same asset register.
Can you attend outside our operating hours?
Yes, and on 24 hour sites we schedule at shift changeover. Isolation windows are agreed in writing so nobody discovers on the day that plant cannot be shut down.
How do you handle F-Gas on larger systems?
The leak check interval is calculated from each system's CO2 equivalent charge, which on warehouse refrigeration is often high enough to require frequent checks. The interval is driven by the planner and the records are issued in an auditable format.
Keep reading
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