What to look at when a commercial freezer stops holding, and when to call an engineer in London.
A commercial freezer breakdown is usually one of a few faults, and the order you check them in matters. If you open the lid or the door every five minutes while you wait, you throw away the cold that is still in the food. This note is what an engineer looks at first, and what you can check before we arrive. It is not a repair you do yourself if gas, electrics, or a sealed system is involved.
Kept Cold attends commercial freezers across London, inside the M25, strongest in central, north, and east. We are on site within 4 hours, usually within 2. The line is open 24 hours a day, every day. Out of hours starts at 17:00. The engineers are F-Gas and City and Guilds qualified. There are seven of them, each with at least five years on commercial plant. Kept Cold is Refcom certified.
Is the plug in, and has a breaker tripped. A freezer on a kitchen ring that shares a socket with a warmer will trip and look dead. If other equipment on the same wall is also off, it is the supply, not the compressor. Do not keep resetting a breaker that trips at once. That is a fault for us, not a habit.
Write down what the display says. A high temperature alarm means the cabinet has been warm for the delay set in the controller. A probe alarm means the controller does not trust its own sensor. A blank display with the cabinet silent is power or a failed controller. A display that shows a cold number while the food is soft means the probe is not in the air that matters, or the probe has failed.
A door that does not meet the frame, or a gasket you can see light through, lets moist kitchen air onto the coil. The freezer then ices and stops freezing the food, while the compressor runs all day. Shut the door and see if it stays shut. If the closer is tired, the door will creep open as soon as you walk away.
Look at the coil or the back wall if you can do that without a long door open. A coil buried in ice is not moving air. The food warms even though the plant sounds busy. Causes are a failed defrost heater, a drain that has frozen, or the door fault above. Do not pour hot water over the coil. You flood the drain and you can split a pipe. The icing note for fridges, which is the same physics, is why a commercial fridge ices up.
A freezer that should be running and is silent has stopped. A freezer that clicks, tries to start, and clicks again has a compressor or a starter that is not getting going. A scream from a fan is a bearing. A hiss that was not there last week can be gas. You do not need to name the part. You need to tell us which of those you can hear.
Dirty condensers are the everyday one. The condenser is often underneath or at the back, full of flour and grease. The compressor then runs hot and the cabinet never pulls down. Fans are next. One seized evaporator fan ices one side of the coil and leaves a warm corner. A seized condenser fan trips the unit on high pressure, which from the kitchen looks like a freezer that randomly cuts out.
Defrost failure is the one that looks like a sudden breakdown and has been building for days. The coil ices a little more after each incomplete defrost until air cannot cross it. Gas leaks show up as a cabinet that used to hold overnight and now cannot, with a compressor that runs and runs. Door seals and heater wires on upright freezers do the same job as on a walk in: if the frame is wet or iced in a line, the heat in the frame has failed or the seal has split.
Controls fail too. A wrong set point after someone "had a look" will hold the cabinet at whatever was keyed in. We set it back to the temperature the food needs and we write that on the report.
An upright freezer shows ice on the back wall and water on the floor when the drain blocks. A chest freezer hides the coil in the walls, so the clue is soft food on top and a compressor that never rests. A walk in freezer room adds the door heater and the evaporator fans in the room itself. Those are on the cold room repair page. Cabinet freezers are with commercial freezer repair and the wider commercial fridge repair work.
Call if the food is soft, if the cabinet is silent and the supply is on, if you can smell burning, if you suspect gas, or if the coil is a block of ice. Call if a breaker will not stay on. Do not keep opening the door to check. Move at risk food into a cabinet that is still holding, if you have one, and leave the failed one shut.
Call 020 8146 9071 or book a call out. An emergency call out is on site within 4 hours, usually within 2. Prices exclude VAT. Weekday 08:00 to 17:00 is £120 for the first hour, then £40 per 30 minutes. From 17:00, and at evenings and weekends, the call out is £180 for the first hour, then £60 per 30 minutes. The emergency call out is £240, then £40 per 30 minutes in weekday hours and £60 per 30 minutes out of hours. Parts are at cost. A typical repair is shown as £120 to £320 before VAT on the pricing page. There is no repair guarantee.
If this is not the first time the same freezer has failed, a planned visit is on the maintenance contracts page. A standalone cabinet is £60 per unit per visit plus VAT, minimum two units. We recommend two visits a year. Each visit is charged at that price.
Early warnings, before a full breakdown, are in signs a commercial fridge needs repair. If the failure is during service, the emergency refrigeration service is the page to use.