For budget-conscious grocery stores, cafeterias and restaurants, there’s a natural inclination to choose commercial refrigeration equipment that comes with the lowest purchase price. But like any race, if you start off on the wrong foot, you’re sure to see the impact down the road. Performance issues that lead to costly repairs. Inefficient energy use that keeps utility bills high.
Rather than focusing only on the initial cost of commercial refrigeration equipment, it’s important to consider all operating costs throughout the duration of its life span — what’s known as the total cost of ownership (TCO). This assessment will help you truly understand the long-term value of your investment.
Water condensation that forms under any refrigerated fixture when the air is stagnant will pool and find its way to either the sales floor or the partition wall (and subsequently, attract rodents). The results are either a degraded tile adhesive that mars the appearance of the floor, a slip-and-fall incident or a rotted drywall that grows black mold. In either case, repairs will be needed to preserve the integrity of the store and keep people safe.
Due to the connected pipework between traditionally remotely piped refrigeration systems, a maintenance issue with one component often results in the designed operation being compromised. A loss of products ultimately leads to inconvenience for customers and the loss of related sales opportunities.
Legacy systems offer redundancy, which means the capacity and viability of the entire system allows for a certain amount of insurance in the case that a compressor fails. Yet, maintenance on these designs, if done properly, is expensive to perform — and there are shared components that can also fail and require costly repairs (e.g., piping, common condensers, etc.) . That’s why it’s important to consider the budget for maintenance before deciding to install one of these systems. After all, the maintenance budget tends to be the first thing to go in tough times.
The harder commercial refrigeration equipment has to work to keep perishable items cold, the higher utility bills businesses will see month-over-month. While this can be due in part to poor design or original construction failings, extensive pipework can also be to blame. Moving refrigerant and lubricating oil requires velocity through long insulated pipe runs, which requires more refrigerant and thus a greater degree of energy.
Pure Cold self-contained refrigerated display cases provide a number of benefits over the competition:
This is just a sample of the value that Pure Cold fixtures provide over time. To learn more about the benefits of Pure Cold refrigeration equipment — and how the team at Pro HVAC/R can help install and maintain these fixtures — contact us today.