How to control temperatures in your cooling equipment during summer

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Learn how to manage temperatures in your fridge, freezer, warehouse, or other facility during summer to prevent deviations and safeguard temperature-sensitive goods like pharmaceuticals from the heat.

The warm summer months can pose a serious challenge in relation to the storage of medicine and other temperature-sensitive goods. We provide you with a series of advice that you can use to ensure that your cooling equipment does not experience critical temperature deviations during the summer months.

In this article, we go through:

1. What you should be aware of during summer
2. 4 things you can do to avoid temperature deviations

What are the risks that come with the heat?

First things first: The risk is, of course, the higher temperature that can occur in storage rooms and rooms with refrigerators and freezers. However, in addition to the direct danger of deviations in the storage room, there is also the risk that your refrigeration and freezing equipment do not perform as well as they normally do.

What should you be aware of when storing temperature-sensitive goods during summer?

There are a number of things you can keep in mind in order to avoid deviations during the summer months:

1. Large temperature fluctuations in refrigeration equipment

In the summer months when the temperature rises, you should be aware of large fluctuations in the temperature of your equipment, mainly high temperatures.

It is recommended to use temperature monitoring with continuous monitoring and alarm so you can be alerted of any fluctuations. That way, you can take care of the temperature fluctuation before it becomes a divergence.

2. The cooling capacity of your equipment

If your refrigeration equipment is in a room that gets warmer than normal during the summer, it cannot cool as much as usual. Therefore, it is important to think about how much you place in your cooling equipment since the equipment will not be able to cool your goods at the same rate as under normal conditions. If you use continuous temperature monitoring, you can keep an eye on how long it takes for the temperature to stabilize when you fill in new items and compare it to how long it normally takes.

3. Critical high temperatures in your equipment

When the ambient temperature rises, it will also mean that the warm areas (typically in the lid, on the top of your equipment as well as near the compressor at the bottom) will be higher than normal and you should, therefore, consider whether to use these areas during the summer months.

4. Sunlight on goods in sales areas

It can get really hot in sales areas during the summer. It may be a good idea to measure and log temperatures in the areas that receive sunlight to ensure that these areas do not experience critical high temperatures during the day.

What can you do yourself?

Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to avoid temperature deviations during the summer.

1. Keep alert!

The most important thing you can do is to use a temperature monitoring system that keeps an eye on the temperature of your equipment and storage rooms and notifies you if the temperature approaches a critical level. This will enable you to quickly handle temperature fluctuations and thus avoid expensive goods being ruined.

2. Ensure cooling equipment have enough space

Cooling equipment needs a lot of space to be able to give off heat. Cooling equipment can be pulled away from the wall to lower the generated heat. In addition to that, there must be free air above and at the sides. The cooling equipment will work better the more heat it is able to give off and it will also provide a smaller electricity bill.

In addition to this, you can help your equipment by, for example, lowering the temperature in the room by lowering the climate control or by opening a window in the morning so the warm air can get out.

3. Lower sun intake

Use curtains or other measures to lower the amount of sun that falls on your equipment and items.

4. Think about how much you place in the cooling equipment

Problems may occur if you place too many items in your cooling equipment. When you fill your cooling equipment with new goods, it will raise the temperature if these are not cooled beforehand. It is therefore very important to either spread the newly arrived items on several pieces of cooling equipment or place them in the cooling equipment gradually instead of all of it at once.