Its time I invest in a walk in cooler for one of our properties. Anyone have any good recommendations on companies for this? Any "must haves" when building one out or anything they wished they would have put in when they did one?

Thanks in advance

Make it big and keep it stocked. Amerikooler or Masterbilt

Man that’s nice

Make sure it's easy to clean.

Ill take the first one on the right.

Nice set up BTW.

Hook_n_Line, how big is that cooler?

I'm going to say 6x8 and we had about 18 deer in it at one time during a management hunt. Get more hooks than you think you'll need.

up here we call it The Great Outdoors...
tis a MNasota thang. ....
SKOL

A drain in the middle of the floor is a must for easy clean up. Also, if putting it in a barn, shelter…put it close to a door if possible. Ours was placed the opposite end of the door and we have to clean the concrete floor every time we drag a deer to the cooler.

Get one without a floor and use concrete with a drain. LED lights. 2 meat pole with hooks - preferably stand alone and not anchored to the wall. If you want to get real fancy add a water hose bib to the inside. There are plenty of used walk-ins out there now due to many restaurants going out of business lately. Amerikooler is a good choice.

Drains stink, literally. Have to bleach them to knock down the smell.
We put down large cardboard boxes, water heater or frig boxes to catch the blood. Just throw them away when done.
Water bib would be nice or have one just outside the cooler.

The best advice I can give you is .... location, location, location!

Make sure you have the power set up where you can put the cooler with easy access by either truck or SxS; my cousin had his set up halfway down the longside of this 60x40 barn so no matter what the cooler was as far as possible from either overhead door and with the equipment parked in the barn it was a MAJOR pain to drag/carry deer to the cooler.

If it were me.... I'd place the cooler on either a rock or concrete pad that is under an overhang of the barn directly beside where we clean deer at, so you could literally back the truck up to the cooler to both unload deer & groceries without having to actually go into the main barn area.

Also - a low temp indicator is a great feature to have, it notifies you if the temp drops below a certain point.

Get one that can stand in a pole barn near the cleaning rack. Put the deer up on the rack do what you need then hook'em and hang'em.

i have sold reefer boxes off bobtail trucks for this use. The ones with electric stand by work best, run off electric or diesel. You can find them up to 26 ft long
ck with used truck dealers

We had a unique walk in cooler. We Bought an enclosed trailer so the whole unit was portable. Spray foamed the inside and put a regular window AC unit and added a Coolbot - worked like a charm and way less electrical cost to run a 110 window unit.

this

Ours is in a corner.

Concrete floor, big drain, great lighting, big sink, water hose, lots of options for hanging deer on the ceiling and a cooler of beer. All of your problems are now solved other than filling it up…

Huh?
I'm guessing if it stunk then a pee trap was not installed on the drain.

Don’t judge. Gotta do whatcha gotta do.

Skinner, you get the creative thinking award!

I'm telling you an old coke machine works quite well.

My place came with one. 'Course, I had to replace the inner and outer units as soon as I got here. I think the previous owner poured the little slab right outside of it. He mixed it wrong. Every time you spray it off, a little bit goes away. 'Looks like the Berlin Wall, when they started tearing it down. I'll have to get that re-poured eventually.

Buy a squeegee on Amazon for after you hose it out. Handling a squeegee again really brought back memories of working in the kitchen at the Denton Country Club.

Wood shavings works fine if you don’t have a drain.

Be nice to have the floor epoxied with grit/traction/no slip coating.