MaintScope · Florist

Florist cool room service

Almost no florist has a service agreement, and almost every florist cool room is set for food rather than flowers. Too cold damages petals and costs more to run; too dry shortens vase life and gets blamed on the supplier. Both are fixable in one visit.

ABN 54 824 299 683RTA AU069294RHL L149949
Something not working right now?Don't read the rest of this — get someone out to look at it.

And if it's still running

Know what it's going to cost you — before it costs you

A licenced tech goes through every bit of air conditioning, ventilation and refrigeration you've got, and writes down what condition it's in, what needs doing and when, and what it's realistically going to cost you over the next year and the next five. Plain English, one PDF.

When this equipment stops, stock starts dying the same day.

Get a health check

Worked example · Florist · Gosford

What the report actually says

This is an example, not a real customer. It's built from the equipment a florist business typically runs, so you can see the shape of the report before you book one. Yours would be based on what's actually in your place.

What you’ve got

Equipment Age Condition Note
Walk-in cool room Unknown Action Running colder than it needs to, no humidity control
Display fridge (glass door) ~6 yrs Serviceable Door seal on the left showing gaps
Shop split system ~7 yrs Serviceable Filters never cleaned

Needs attention now

  • Your cool room is too cold. Most florists run 2–4°C because that’s what the fridge came set to. Cut flowers do better at 4–6°C with humidity up. Too cold damages petals on tropicals and costs you more to run.
  • No humidity management. A cool room drying your stock out is shortening vase life, which shortens the life of your reputation.
  • Door seal on the display fridge. Cheap fix, immediate power saving.

Your service year

When What
April Cool room service — coils, gas, defrost cycle, calibrate
Sept / Oct Second cool room check before summer
6-monthly Split system filter clean
Annual Display fridge service, seals

What it costs — next 12 months

Item Low High
Cool room service, 2 visits $500 $900
Display fridge service $180 $380
Split system service $180 $280
Seals and minor parts $150 $350
Total $1,010 $1,910

Coming in five years

  • Cool room compressor — $2,800–5,500 if it’s an older unit
  • Display fridge — usually replaced whole rather than repaired: $1,800–4,500
  • Refrigerant — older cool rooms on phase-down gas will get expensive to top up

Quietly costing you money

Two things, both invisible. Running 2°C colder than you need costs roughly 5–8% more energy per degree. And stock loss from dry air — if you’re binning flowers before they sell, that’s a humidity problem, not a supplier problem.

What I’d do first

  1. Get the cool room temperature and humidity set for flowers, not for food
  2. Service and calibrate — most florist cool rooms have never had a gauge on them
  3. Seals on the display fridge

How it works

$150 to come out. Everything else depends on what's there.

  1. I come out — $150.I go through the lot: what you've got, how old it is, what condition it's in. Takes an hour or two depending on how much is in the place.
  2. You get it in writing within 48 hours.One PDF. What's there, what needs doing and when, what it should cost you over the year, and what's coming further out.
  3. Anything that needs fixing, I quote on what I find.I can't price a service off a website — it depends on the unit, the access and what turns up when it's open. You'll get a real number, not a guess.
  4. If you'd rather not think about it again, I'll handle it.Scheduled servicing across the year, timed around your trade. No lock-in — plenty of people take the report and go it alone, and that's genuinely fine.
For a florist, expect somewhere around $1,010–1,910 a year in routine servicing once it's on a schedule — not counting breakdowns. Most people are either spending nothing and paying for it later, or spending more than that reacting to things. Knowing the number is the point.
Book a visit — $150

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