Shops, the city centre and the growers behind them
Armadale is the main centre for Perth's south eastern fringe. Its city centre gathers Armadale Shopping City, supermarkets, specialty food shops, cafés, pubs and the services that a growing population needs. Up the scarp to the south east, around Roleystone and Karragullen, orchards grow apples, stone fruit and citrus, and many keep cool rooms for picked fruit.
Armadale also gets hotter than the coast in summer, sitting well inland with the scarp behind it, so condensing units on shop roofs and shed walls face long afternoons in the heat. The station at the end of the Armadale line brings steady foot traffic into the centre, and many of the food businesses there trade six or seven days a week, with little quiet time for repairs.
The equipment in each setting is quite different:
- Supermarkets and grocers with walk in cool rooms, freezer rooms and long runs of display cases.
- Butchers, bakeries and delis relying on one or two rooms for the whole shop.
- Cafés, pubs and takeaways with small cool rooms, prep fridges and glass door drinks fridges.
- Orchards and packing sheds with fruit cool rooms built to hold bins for weeks or months.
Who repairs cool rooms in Armadale
Sam covers Armadale. Sam Celesti is the lead technician at Commercial Refrigeration Perth, with more than 20 years in commercial refrigeration and ARCtick licence AU55592. Armadale is about 27 km from the Perth CBD. He works on major brands including Bitzer, Danfoss, Carel and Tecumseh, and on display equipment from Skope and others through our commercial fridge repairs.
Ring first for a free phone assessment of the symptoms. Once Sam has inspected the system you will have a fixed quote, and no work starts until you approve it. He does the job himself, without subcontractors.
Fruit rooms through the harvest run
Orchard cool rooms around Armadale work to a long season. Stone fruit comes in over summer, and apples and pears follow into autumn and are often held for months after. A shop cool room only has to keep stock cold for a few days. A fruit room has to hold it steady for a whole season, and small errors add up over that time.
The things that shorten storage life are rarely dramatic:
- A drifting probe. If the controller reads a degree or two off, fruit is held too warm and ripens early, or too cold and is damaged near the coil.
- Low humidity. A coil running too cold strips moisture from the air, and fruit loses weight and firmness.
- Uneven airflow. A failed evaporator fan or bins stacked without gaps leave warm pockets in the middle of the stack.
- Worn door seals. Constant forklift traffic during picking tears seals and lets warm air in.
Because none of these trigger an obvious breakdown, they are best found before the first bins go in. A pre-harvest maintenance check covers probes, fans, defrost, refrigerant charge and seals, and leaves the room ready for the season.
What to do until the repair
In a shop, close the door and keep it closed, check the switchboard and controller, and write down the temperature and time. Potentially hazardous food such as meat, dairy and cooked dishes should be at 5°C or colder under FSANZ guidance; if it has been warmer for under 2 hours it can return to the fridge, 2 to 4 hours means use it immediately, and 4 hours or more means it must be discarded.
Check the condensing unit outside as well. If its fan has stopped, or leaves and packaging have blown against the coil, note that for Sam but leave panels closed and do not try to restart anything yourself.
In a fruit room, stop bringing in fresh bins, keep the door shut and leave the stack alone so you do not let more warm air in. Note the temperature reading so Sam can see how quickly it is rising.
For more on the full service, see cool room repairs around Perth. Kelmscott, just to the north, is covered too.
