Fridge and freezer doors

It has always been a staple of energy training related to catering that the doors of fridges and freezers should have tight seals and effective closers, and that walk-in freezers should have insulated strip curtains to supplement the proper door when it needs to be kept open temporarily. Most of us would assume that this advice relates to preventing the ingress of ambient air, but that’s not the whole story. When room air gets into a freezer, something like a quarter of the energy needed to cool it down goes into condensing and then freezing the water vapour it was carrying. The amounts involved are not huge: something like 0.02 kWh per cubic metre of air overall. What is significant is that the internal vapour pressure will plunge. So even after the door is closed, ambient moisture will pour in through any gaps in door seals, adding continuous cooling load as the condense-freeze process continues. Meanwhile the resulting ice build-up will be clobbering the energy performance.

It’s atmospheric moisture that you need to keep out.