Don't Forget Your Defrost Settings!

The season is changing and this can mean decreased efficiency for your refrigeration systems due to the defrost cycles.

One of the adjustment criteria plants sometimes forget is adjusting defrost timers for air filtration from the outside. The spring and summer months generally have a higher moisture content in the air allowing free moisture to attach to the refrigeration coils. The increase in moisture requires an increase in your defrost frequency or defrosts time sequences.

The exact opposite happens in the winter months and defrost frequency can generally be reduced due to drier air infiltrating your facility. With newer defrost time clocks, you have better control over your defrost sequence. The controllers will control: pump out, hot gas, equalize and fan delay steps which are timed and programmed for each specific evaporator. Adjustments should be routinely made during your monthly or quarterly preventative maintenance inspections. To increase system efficiency and prevent system upsets, defrost cycles should always be staggered between your evaporators, minimizing the number of units in defrost at any given time.

If you notice an increase in refrigerated space temperatures during defrost, you may need to decrease the length of time or frequency of your defrost. Vice versa, if you noticed your temperatures are increasing and you are not in defrost, you may need to increase your length of time or frequency due to excess frost, snow, or ice. It is important to visually inspect your coil and the defrost control valves for the evaporator before changing your defrost times or timers. Maintenance items that have developed since your last maintenance evolution may be the culprit, not the defrost times or timers. We want your systems to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Please call our service team to install or adjust your defrost controllers to help your system run as efficiently as possible.