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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Refrigeration help

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  • From: Liz Pike <strawbry_wine AT yahoo.com>
  • To: MF <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Refrigeration help
  • Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 06:35:15 -0800 (PST)

For whatever reason, the listserv keeps rejecting this
post so I'm sending it out myself...Liz Pike

Ours is 14 x 18 x 8 high. We originally built the pad
for a guy who was going to install a prefab unit that
came out of a Kroger’s supermarket that was moving.
He told us that the whole thing including the
refrigeration unit would cost ~4K. We had decided on
this rather that buy a prefab unit from Barr. I think
a 10 x 12 would’ve cost around $5-6K plus shipping to
Alaska (no small item) and then we would’ve had to
hire a refrigeration person to install it and make
sure its working properly. Anyway, this was in April.
After we built the pad and numerous delays on this
guy’s part, he told us that it would be $8500. Now
it’s June and we’re harvesting flowers for June
weddings and starting our CSA. We dropped this guy
and started building the frame structure like I
described earlier - 2x6 with white foam and then 2x2’s
on the inside running perpendicular to framing with 1
½ inch bluefoam - ~R40. In the meanwhile we got a
hold of a more trustworthy refrigeration guy.



This new refrigeration guy taught us a lot about what
we need to know. Evidently there are 2 broad
categories of cooling units. One kind needs to be
installed by a refrigeration person and one doesn’t.
The former kind cost less outright but costs more to
install unless you know how these things work. The
second kind is ready to go - just wire them in and
turn on the switch. We decided to go with the second
kind on his recommendation based on the small size of
room we wanted to cool and the R value we had. Normal
prefab units such as the kind you’d find in a
supermarket are R18 and ours was R40. We bought a
Polar Pac model 550963 1 hp side mount cooler. The
cost new was $2100, we bought a 4 year extended
warranty for $120 and shipping was $275 so it cost us
~$2500. We simply framed a rough opening for it and
put it in. The problem was it is both very heavy and
very fragile (not a great combination), but after
being very careful, four of us got it into the hole
and quickly bolted it in. It took a while tweaking
the settings for it to work properly. It came preset
for the defrost cycles to go for 15 min every 6 hours.
This was not nearly enough since we were always
hosing things down to keep the produce moist and we
also store our cut flowers in buckets full of water
(another dilemma I’ll get to). We ended up setting
the defrost cycle to be for ½ an hour every 4 hours
and then it worked great keeping the temp at 34-36
degrees.



I must say that after all the costs (1 K for the pad,
3K for the building materials, 2.5K for the
refrigeration) it was well worth it and changed the
whole way we now work on the farm. Not only are our
veggies and flowers kept cool, but we are no longer
rushed on harvest or delivery days, since we can
harvest things when the crop is ready and not just the
day it needs to be delivered and sold. I don’t know
how we operated without a cooler. I know there are
way less expensive ways to go, but that’s how we did
it. I should mention that the walk-in is under a
larger 28 x 48 processing shed, I think that if you’re
building a box to stand alone there would be other
considerations.



We considered doing what our friends did for storing
their root crops. They dig a hole and put half a
connex (shipping container) in it. The half connex is
8 x8x 20ft long. It’s buried 4 feet deep and the dirt
out of the hole was piled on top, then a layer of
straw bales was placed on top of that and they built a
pole shed over the whole thing. Very ingenious. The
half connex cost $1500 and then all it took was $500
to rent a loader for the day to do dirt work. No
energy costs except one lonely light bulb on the
ceiling. With the cool Alaska soils, it stays around
40 degrees in there all summer and doesn’t freeze
until December when the outside temps are dipping from
minus 20 to minus 40. We decided not to go that
route, mostly because we wanted to regulate the
temperature better for our cut flowers and we didn’t
want to be going up and down a ramp all day. We will
probably build a similar root cellar in the future as
we expand and need more long-term storage.



One loose end – you might ask why we are storing cut
flowers and vegetables in the same cooler. We thought
long and hard about this because 1/3 of our business
is specialty cuts. We decided to store everything in
the same room because very few of the veggies we grow
put out ethylene gas which would damage the flowers.
Also most of the flowers are in and out of the cooler
the next day. The exception is sometimes we hold
lilies, glads, and peonies for a longer time but we
never noticed any ill effects.



I’m sorry I don’t have any photos to show you now, but
if you email me rosie-ck AT mosquitonet.com , I’d be
happy to take pictures and send them along.



Mike Emers

Rosie Creek Farm

Ester, Alaska





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