Flowers want different conditions from food. Most cut flowers do best a few degrees above freezing, somewhere in the mid 30s, with high humidity so the petals don’t dehydrate. Tropicals like anthuriums and many orchids don’t want it that cold at all, which is why a lot of shops keep a second, warmer cooler.
A floral cooler is built around that. Compared with a food cooler, it usually has a bigger evaporator coil running at a smaller temperature difference, so it pulls less moisture out of the air. When a floral cooler starts drying flowers out, the coil may be icing, a fan may be out, or the box may be low on refrigerant and running the coil colder than it should. If someone swapped the original coil for a standard one at some point, that’ll do it too. Leaks are covered under refrigerant leak repair.
Before the holiday rush
Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day put more stems in your cooler than any other weeks of the year, and the door is open half the day. A cooler with a dirty condenser or a tired compressor is most likely to struggle right then. So have it checked in January and again in April instead of waiting for the week of. The tech cleans the condenser and looks over the gaskets and hinges, then runs the box down to make sure it holds with the door shut. It’s the same work as one of our maintenance visits.
During the rush, keep buckets a few inches back from the fan coil so air can get around the box. A packed cooler with no airflow will have warm spots down low and in the corners.
Glass front display coolers are covered on the display case page, and walk-in flower boxes on walk-in cooler repair.
