Courtesy of Jame K., Virtually Green, San Francisco, CA Here’s a few quick thoughts about walkin cooler design, largely based on what my appropriate technology group used to recommend for village small-scale DIY walkin cooler systems.  We didn’t have the Coolbot at the time though:  it’s a great alternative to commercial refrigeration units. Here’s a link to a Canada Plan Service document that lays out some of the basics for designing and building a walkin cooler. The Coolbot retrofit of window air conditioners is a reliable solution, but do follow the Coolbot suggestions for the best air conditioner unit.  I know someone who went cheap and regretted it immediately.  I also recommend that you get two air conditioners rather than one, so you have redundancy in this critical component of the walkin cooler.  You really don’t want to find yourself with a failed air conditioner and a cooler full of spoiled produce.  If one of the units goes down the other can pick up the extra load until you can replace the failed unit.

Use a strip door to keep cool air in when you’re entering and exiting the cooler.  These are thick wide plastic strips that hang vertically from the top of the door to the floor and that overlap each other horizontally.  You push through them to enter and exit.  These can radically reduce the loss of cool air when moving quantities of produce in and out. The size of a walkin cooler is based upon peak use, in other words the moments in the harvest cycle when you have the most produce needing cool storage.  Use the dimensions of your standard sizes of storage containers:  bins, boxes, tubs, etc.  If you’re doing the routine crop planning for SPIN beds then you should be able to estimate the maximum volume of your various harvested crops needing container storage in your walkin cooler during your harvest weeks.  Leaving 50% of the interior volume for aisles and air circulation is a good rule of thumb, which can also in emergencies temporarily handle extra produce volume if needed.

You’ll likely be using pallets or shelves for your containers, so remember to leave room for maneuvering dollies and lift-trucks in and out of the walkin cooler.  Shelves that can be adapted to different dimension containers allow you to flexibly respond to changes in the quantities of your harvests.  Also with shelves remember the work safety, ergonomics and back strain issues of lifting containers on and off high shelves.air from window ac smells You need to have the air inside the cooler circulating freely to avoid hot or cold spots or major differences in humidity in the horizontal and vertical volume of the cooler. wine room air conditioning unitsSet the Coolbot air conditioners to optimize their effects on air circulation.air conditioner unit making clicking noise

One thing you don’t want inside a walkin cooler is condensation problems, which can lead to mold and mildew that can affect produce quality.  You want high humidity to avoid dessication and wilting of produce, but not so high that water condenses on surfaces.  Mount a couple digital dual humidity/temperature meters inside your walkin cooler to monitor humidity and temperature at different horizontal and vertical locations.  You can use these to monitor and better calibrate the performance of your air conditioners as well.  I recommend buying ones with NIST certification to ensure that they will perform as advertised and also to satisfy any food safety regs or or insurance concerning produce storage.  Walk-in coolers are a staple for restaurants and bars.  Problem is, they're expensive!  Usually $10,000 and up and the maintenance costs can add up fast.  Coolbot is a little computer that can turn an off-the-shelf air conditioner into a DIY walk-in cooler. Coolbot uses sensors to trick the A/C unit into bringing the room temperature as low as 34 degrees.  

It also manages the unit to make sure it doesn't freeze up.  The company says setup takes 10 minutes or less.  Most of your time will be spent building an insulated room to use as your cooler.  Typically the entire setup with the Coolbot, an A/C unit and construction of an insulated room will cost about $3,000. You can buy Coolbot directly from their site for $315. CU students forced out of apartments deemed uninhabitable Free ‘escape room’ challenge in Boulder in October Take steps to stay healthy in the heat Good Day Colorado News Technology Tech Review: Smart Doorbells help keep your family safe Health inspector to restaurant: Clean the kitchen or close Heated massage on the go Free phone calls at home with OBiTALK and Google Voice How police used robot, explosives to take out Dallas sniper Denver declares moratorium on ‘micro unit’ development with no parking Giving Tips for Orlando Tragedy Former patient says he contracted hepatitis C from Swedish Medical Center

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