Pull your reach-in out a few inches and look at its condenser coil, usually behind a grille at the bottom or the top. If it’s furred over with grease and lint, that alone can push the box past 41 by late afternoon. In the small Old Town kitchens, where a reach-in often sits right beside the fryer because there’s no other spot for it, this is one of the first things to look at.
Cleaning a coil is cheap, and our post on condenser coils shows what a clogged one looks like. When the coil’s clean and the box is still warm, a tech needs to check the fans and the refrigerant charge, and then the compressor (see reach-in repair).
Mailing addresses on the county side
We cover the whole city, including Del Ray along Mount Vernon Avenue, Carlyle and Potomac Yard, and the West End out by Landmark. We also go to the many addresses that say Alexandria on the mail but are really Fairfax County, in the 22306 to 22312 and 22315 ZIPs along Richmond Highway.
That difference matters for one thing, which is who inspects you. Inside the city it’s the Alexandria Health Department, and on the county side it’s the Fairfax County Health Department. Both hold you to the same rule, cold food at 41 F or below, checked with a probe in the food. If you’d like to go over your own logs before an inspector does, our temperature log guide walks through it, and it’s worth doing a week or two ahead so there’s time to fix anything that turns up.
Back doors and alleys
Lots of Old Town deliveries come in through a rear alley. If that’s how your suppliers get in, it’s probably how our tech should come in too.
Want the old parts after a repair? Say so and the tech will leave them with you.
