Commercial Refrigeration Equipment

Whether your commercial refrigeration equipment is a small under-counter refrigerator, a keg refrigerator, a large walk-in freezer, or a Thermo King transportation refrigeration system, many of the technical concerns will be the same.

The difference of course, is the amount of product affected when the equipment isn't cooling properly.

Bohn refrigeration equipment, Heatcraft refrigeration equipment, Hussmann refrigeration equipment, and Russell refrigeration equipment are all popular brands of medium and low temperature condensers and evaporators used in walk-in type commercial refrigeration equipment.

Delfield refrigeration equipment and True refrigeration equipment are major brands of reach-in type commercial refrigeration equipment.

I've worked on units and systems from all of the companies listed above, and my opinion as a technician is that they're all well made, and deserve their reputations for quality and durability.

If you're comparing some competitive bids for new equipment, if your best price and warranty is for any of these brands, go for it.

If you're still looking for good prices on air conditioning and refrigeration equipment, on our Equipment on Sale page you'll find links to a variety of brand name equipment on sale at Ebay.

With all refrigeration equpment, maintenance is essential.

You have to keep the evaporator and condenser and coils (and filters, if installed) clean, and make sure the fan blades are clean, and the right size, to maintain proper air flow.

When air flow through either the evaporator or condenser is restricted, efficiency decreases, and electrical energy consumption increases.

If the condenser coils gets dirty enough, the compressor discharge pressures can get high enough to break the compressor in a short period of time.

If the unit is a reach in, with the condensing unit in the bottom, and it's located in a dusty area, dust can build up on the condenser coil and filter in a surprisingly short time, so make it a point to establish a maintenance schedule, and stick to the schedule.

If you're retro-fitting older commercial refrigeration equipment to the newer refrigerants, make sure you follow the refrigerant and compressor manufacturer's recommendations.

Get all the old mineral oil out, and use the correct synthetic oil for the new refrigerant.

Change the filter-drier, and when the unit is running, make sure the operating pressures, temperatures, superheat, and subcooling are in the correct range.

For older R-12 reach-ins with capillary tubes, you may be converting to R-409a or R-134a.

Our facility is converting these old units from R-12 to R-134a when the compressors fail,

And we're also converting old R-502 reach in freezers to R-404a when the compressors fail.

We've been using #4 capillary tube, cut a lot shorter than recommended by the chart on the package.

We've experimented, and cut the cap tube so our suction pressure, superheat, and subcooling are in the correct range when the box is about 7° above set point.

We've had good results doing this with our older medium temperature and low temperature reach-in commercial refrigeration equipment, and there a more details about how we do it on our Refrigerant Retrofitting page.

For more service information, we discuss refrigerator troubleshooting on our Commercial Refrigerator Troubleshooting page; our System Evaluation Manual has a cycle diagram and guidelines for evaluating the pressures and temperatures of air conditioning, medium temperature, and low temperature refrigeration equipment; and our Refrigeration Control System page explains the common controls found in medium and low temperature refrigeration systems.

I hope this page has helped, and please, feel free to contact us with any specific HVAC questions you might have, including questions about refrigeration on Guam, and air conditioning on Guam.