Looking After Your Equipment In The Cold Weather

At this time of the year, freezing temperatures can mean frozen or burst pipes, and the inconvenience caused by this happening. If not suitably protected, your Temporary Kitchen or Catering Equipment is liable to freeze. To avoid possible problems, please ensure you protect your equipment and follow these tips.

External Pipe Work

All external water pipework should be suitably lagged and left drained down during longer periods when the equipment is not in use.

If you are hiring one of our external water heaters, then these must be left connected to the electrical power supply at all times.

For longer and larger Portable Kitchen hires, you may wish to install trace heating to the external pipework.

Internal Pipe Work

Internal pipework is also subject to freezing and the resultant repairs to both pipework and equipment, such as dishwashers and sinks, can be complex and expensive.

Frost watcher heaters are provided in all PKL kitchens that contain water pipework, these must be switched on at all times (this is the small chrome and black device under the sink).

Once you have finished with your dishwasher and it is ready to be collected, you must ensure that it has been drained out.

Automatic Gas Change Over Valve

In particularly cold weather where bottles are left exposed or inadequately stored, the pressure on the SUPPLY side may drop too low for proper operation of the kitchen equipment.

In this event, the indicator may turn red even though there is still some gas left in the SUPPLY side cylinders. (This may be sypmtomised by frosting on the bottles and can be prevented by adding more bottles on line).

The changeover will automatically switch to the RESERVE side until such time as there is sufficient pressure on the SUPPLY side for proper operation of the kitchen equipment and then it will switch back again.

Note: The changeover process may be repeated several times for a few hours until the supply cylinders are completely empty.

We hope these tips will help you throughout the cold weather, our aim is for you to have a trouble-free winter.

If you have an item on hire from PKL and have any queries regarding the information above, please feel free to contact PKL Technical Support Department on 01242 663056.

John has worked at PKL for over 15 years and is PKL Purchasing Manager. John is responsible for sourcing the equipment and spares for our vast hire fleet of 55,000 items of catering equipment, while also procures catering equipment for our Rental+ division. Having also worked in our technical support and catering equipment engineering departments for a number of years, there’s not much John doesn’t know about commercial catering equipment, both in terms of how it works and how to keep it running, and what equipment is best for our customers’ requirements.

Keeping Your Kitchen Going During An Emergency

If the cold weather has meant you’ve suffered a sudden loss of your kitchen facilities, we are experts in providing rapid response temporary kitchens to get you back up and running.

The facilities below outline the types of kitchens and equipment that we can supply, often on the same day to ensure that your catering operation is back up and running again as soon as possible.

In some cases, the products below may be used as an interim facility that we can get to you immediately until we are able to supply you with a temporary kitchen that is more tailored to your requirements.