Meat Hanging locker

I'd not be building places to keep meat that was difficult to clean.

There may be some USDA/FDA or other agency requirements as to methods of construction. As TVP45 notes, cleanliness is key. If the meat is warm when entering this room, be sure to to check the data on meat chilling curves from ASHRAE or other sources.

As to vapor barrier on both sides, this would tend to trap moisture that somehow did manage to enter the insulation. I would want to check with a building insulation specialist on this.

on a regular basis, we would allow a meat locker (empty) to return to normal temperature, pull a set of plugs on the vapor barrier (in our case a welded stainless steel interior), pull the temperature down to the lowest we could get, 40 below or so, and hold them at that temperature for 24 hours as the frost built up on the coils. Then we would assume that all of the moisture had been drawn out of the walls and insulation. We'd replace the plugs, run hot gas through the coils to melt the frost, and opened drain holes in the floor to run the melt to the bilges for pumping at a later time. Our walls were steel and our insulation was cork and as i mentioned, our vapor barrier was stainless steel. You could probably work the same system with some sort of plastic over beaverboard or even studs. The meat hangs on steel hooks and the sides of beef weigh as much as 500 pounds. Those things can easily penetrate plastic and wood if not handled carefully. Leak testing would have to be done with electronic rather than propane leak testers to avoid a fire hazard. Beyond that, I can't see any particular engineering or structural problem with a wood-framed meatlocker. Be sure to check the regs, of course. Come to think of it, the egg chiller in my family's chickenhouse was entirely plywood on framing. It didn't even have a vapor barrier. But it did have a big, thick professionally designed and built door with a solid latch on one side and a push plate on the other that pushed the latch open from inside. The temperatures were only in the 40s (great on a summer day)--nothing like a meatlocker--but we never had a problem with moisture inside the chiller. The evaporator tubes drained to the outside, keeping it dry as a bone inside.

As a teenager, I worked in a large meat freezer, probably 40 X 80 feet. It was all wood, walls, flooring, doors. Of course there was insulation behind the wood. We used amonia as a refrigerant.

P E Bobimm

I have seen and worked on many wooden coolers and freezers. None of them would pass todays sanitation codes due to the exposed wood interiors. I would use a plastic panel covering that is available for this application. I you have a Costco in your area look at the meat cutting area and you will see what they use. The colder you go the more insulation you need. I would use a continuous sealed vapor barrier on the warm side only. Any penetration's through the barrier have to be sealed. I have seen many cooler and freezer lighting systems fill up with water because the electrician did not plug the conduits.

What temperature do you plan for this locker?

A friend of mine makes walk in coolers. Click around here.

http://www.rapidfridge.com/home.html

They are about 3.1 inches thick, filled with 3" foamed polyurethane insulation and they are made in segments that cam lock together.

The metal is steel with baked on coating, but can be stainless, if needed.