How to Escape from a Cold Room?
Professional cold rooms today are equipped with all the necessary safety features that allow an easy escape in case of an emergency. This applies to lgooDoors® cold room doors which are designed and manufactured by us. The locking system of our doors comply with the standard EN 179: 2008 that applies to emergency exit doors, meaning that our walk-in cooler doors can be opened from inside even if they have been locked with a key on the outside. This key feature can save lives as the human body cannot tolerate cold for a long time and being locked into a cold room can be a life-threatening experience.
Let’s look at what you can do, should you be locked into a cold room. We have collected our best tips and tricks to get you out safe and sound under any circumstances:
- Start with the door. If you have light inside, the door is easy to find. Should it be dark, look for the fluorescent mark on the door. If you still cannot find the door, you will have to use your hands and try to feel our where the door is located.
- In the meantime, look around if you see an alarm bell so that you can signal the emergency. Many cold rooms are also equipped with an emergency hammer for breaking the wall structure or the door.
- Once you have found the door, try the lock first. Most cold room doors should have an emergency opener, usually a push button or opening lever, on the inside. Press it firmly. Should the door stay stuck, apply tension with your shoulders. It is also possible that only the rubber sealing of the door is frozen, while the lock system is intact.
- If the cold room door does not open under strong pressure, you can try to kick the locking system. The lacking latches are usually made of plastic or aluminum, which should eventually open from a strong kick.
- In case you are stuck completely without any hope for opening the door, your only chance is to disable the cooling system.
- It is critical to do this as soon as possible, especially in rooms with temperatures below 0°C, as in such an extreme situation the human body starts cooling off very fast.
- Examine the cooling system carefully. If the evaporation is facilitated by a fan, prevent the rotation of the fan by blocking its way. This way the air will not cool the space anymore and the heat exchanger will freeze. This might take a while, so in the meantime, look for the incoming coolant pipe. These are usually easy-to-deform copper tubes. Try to flatten the pipe without breaking it with a hard object to prevent the coolant from entering the cold room.
- Look for the PVC drain of the condensate. If you are lucky, it leads to a room next door or outside and you can shout through it.
We hope that you have found our guideline helpful but will not have to use it in practice. We emphasize that choosing a safe cold room door not only saves energy, but it is also critical for work safety.
