Tropical Fridges

It means the manufacturer has tested and stated the conditions the cabinet will hold its set temperature in, and those conditions cover heat and humidity together. The Thermaster SUCG1000 is rated to hold 2°C to 5°C in a 38°C room at 70% relative humidity, and the Bromic under bench fridges hold +2°C to +8°C at 38°C ambient.

It is a specification, not a sales word. Every commercial fridge carries an ambient rating on its product page and a tropical rated cabinet simply carries a higher one. Ask us for the figure on anything you are comparing, because a cabinet with no stated rating is not the same thing.

Put a thermometer where the fridge is going and read it at the worst time of the worst month, not first thing on a mild morning. A kitchen with the ovens and the chargrill running, the dishwasher going and no air conditioning gets a lot hotter than the weather report suggests.

If that reading is anywhere near 38°C, buy tropical rated. Where the room is properly air conditioned and stays that way through summer, a standard cabinet will do the job, and REO offers commercial fridges in every shape for that.

The cabinet stops holding its set temperature. A condenser has to reject heat into the air around it, and the hotter that air is the harder that gets, so the compressor runs longer and longer until it is running almost continuously and still losing ground. The controller shows a number the food inside is not actually at.

Then it costs you twice. Product held above 5°C has to be thrown out, and a compressor running flat out in a 40°C room wears out years early. Warranty will not cover that either, because the cabinet is being used outside the conditions it was sold for.

It matters in a different way. Heat is what makes the compressor struggle. Humidity is what puts water everywhere: condensation runs down the outside of glass doors so customers cannot see in, moisture builds on the evaporator and turns to ice, and the cabinet has to defrost more often to clear it.

That is why a tropical rating quotes a humidity figure next to the temperature. The Thermaster SUCG1000 is rated at 70% relative humidity, which is a real number to hold a wet Queensland summer against.

The element sits inside the door and holds the glass a fraction above the dew point, so moisture in the room never settles on it and the product stays visible. Without it, a glass door in a humid venue fogs over and the customer walks past.

The switch is there so you are not paying for the element all year round. Thermaster offers the LG-208TD and LG-330TD under bench bar coolers with tropicalised heated glass doors and a heater switch, so the heating can be turned off once the weather turns.

A tropical rating covers ambient temperature and humidity. It does not make a cabinet weatherproof, so it still has to sit under cover, out of the rain and out of direct sun, on a level surface with a proper power supply.

For event and marquee work a cabinet on castor wheels is worth having, because it can be rolled in and out instead of lifted and pulled away from a wall to let the condenser breathe. The Bromic under bench fridges and the Thermaster uprights REO offers come on castors.

Under bench fridges sit in the bench run and give you a stainless top to work on. REO offers Bromic under bench cabinets at 282L with two doors, 417L with three and 553L with four, in solid stainless steel or in glass, and Thermaster offers the LG-208TD and LG-330TD under bench bar coolers.

Uprights hold the most for the floor they take. Bromic offers a 650L single door and a 1300L two door in stainless, and Thermaster offers the SUCG500, SUCG1000 and SUCG1500 display uprights in stainless and black, plus the BC3100G three door and BC4100G four door drink coolers.

The Thermaster tropical cabinets REO offers carry two years parts and labour plus a further two years on parts, on the condition that the unit is registered within 14 days of the invoice date. Register it. The second two years costs nothing and it is lost if nobody fills the form in.

Bromic under bench fridges carry 24 months. Terms are shown on each product page and depend on the model, so read them before you order, and ask us if you are weighing up two cabinets and the warranty is what separates them.

Clean the condenser more often than you would in a mild room. Dust and kitchen grease on the fins stop the cabinet rejecting heat, and in a hot room there is no margin left to give away. Put it on a schedule instead of waiting for the fridge to start struggling.

Give it the ventilation clearance the manufacturer asks for, load cold product instead of warm, and shut the doors during a rush. The Thermaster SUCG1000 ventilates through the front and wants 10cm clear there, which makes it easier to build into a bench run than a cabinet that breathes out the back.

Look at the door seals and the glass first. A door pushed out of line in transit lets humid air into the cabinet, which is the one thing it was bought to cope with, and a chipped edge on a glass panel will crack later under temperature.

Do not wait until the fridge is installed. Check the unit for transit damage as soon as it arrives and tell us within 24 hours. Not two days, not two weeks. REO offers a 24-hour replacement guarantee on transit damage, and it only applies if you tell us inside that window.