Innovative Facilities Solutions just retrofitted the lighting in the St. Louis Food Bank freezer from T8 fluorescent fixtures to LED! Years ago Innovative Facilities Solutions deployed an Orion T8 freezer fixture into this facility. Recently, we installed ballast compatible LED T8 tubes into the existing Orion fixtures in this freezer. The LED tubes used had the lowest temp rating at -40 we could find. This freezer ranges from 10 to 20 below zero. They performed fine for a while but then condensation was building up inside some of the tubes causing them to fail! DO NOT INSTALL LED TUBES INTO A FREEZER UNLESS IT IS IP65 RATED tube! Even then, we would not recommend it because commercial freezers are such a harsh climate that never stops! Innovative Facilities Solutions elected to installed an Orion rated LED freezer fixture at 124 watts. This replaced the the LED tube fixtures one for one with a couple watts lower in energy usage and 10% more light! Bottom line is, don’t use LED tubes in freezers and go with a fixture that is rated for this harsh climate! This is not the type of facility to cut corners to save a few dollars up front!
