Floor-Level or Multi-Level
QFMs install at floor level with pallet storage above, or on any number of rack levels — decide early, because the choice drives racking hardware, electrical layout, and installation logistics.
The Two Placement Patterns
Both are field-proven. One is simpler.
A QFM mounts to the rack beam at any level, so the layout question is not “can we” but “where does it pay.” The racking guidelines support 1 to 7 levels of QFMs, and the tallest field installation to date is 7 high. The default answer, when nothing forces it higher, is floor level: blast positions on the floor, conventional pallet storage on the levels above.
| Floor level (default) | Multi-level (up to 7 high) | |
|---|---|---|
| Adapters | Generally none — units mount directly per the racking guidelines. | Setback adapters often required depending on rack type and beam position; pushback racking additionally requires removing the carts at QFM levels. |
| Electrical layout | Circuits run horizontally along the row — simplest daisy-chain. | One circuit per level is the standard pattern; chaining across levels is impractical. |
| Installation | Ground-level mounting, fastest install. | QuickFreeze brings its own lift equipment to place units on upper levels — no customer lift support needed. |
| Position economics | Storage capacity above is preserved. | Higher blast density per bay; more positions converted from storage. |
| When it wins | New construction and most retrofits. | Floor-protection requirements, no appetite for floor-level product structures, or blast demand exceeding the floor-level position count. |
The legitimate reasons operators choose an upper level anyway: avoiding floor damage from blast traffic, and avoiding the cost of building a structure to raise product off the floor. Both are real — just price the adapters and the extra install scope against them.
Why Floor-Level Is the Default — the Operational Case
Beyond install cost: the day-to-day reasons floor-level blast freezing wins.
The placement comparison above is about hardware and install scope. There is a second set of reasons floor-level stays the default — operational and food-safety reasons that show up every day the freezer runs.
It spreads the refrigeration load evenly. Stacking product several pallets high concentrates the thermal load and forces airflow into tight, uneven channels — the outside pallets freeze fast, the buried ones lag, and the system fights a hot spot instead of an even load. Multi-pallet-high arrangements create very high localized refrigeration loads that make the system harder to design around. Spreading product across the floor distributes the load across the whole cell so air reaches every pallet face, freeze times tighten and stay consistent pallet-to-pallet, and the larger footprint also thins out forklift traffic in these very high-turn locations.
Nothing drips down through the stack. Many blast-freeze cases — especially unwrapped or loosely packed meat and poultry — give off purge, a mixture of water and carcass fluids, during the early stages of freezing. In racked blast freezing that liquid drips down through the racking onto the pallets below: a cross-contamination and food-safety problem, the kind of thing an auditor flags, and frozen buildup that has to be removed. At floor level nothing is stacked above anything else, so the purge is contained to a single floor location and every load freezes clean.
Cleanup is a floor scraper, not a rack washdown. Everything happens at floor level, so sanitation is a scraper or squeegee pass — no drip pans to empty, no elevated racking to wash down, no hard-to-reach surfaces collecting buildup. Faster turnaround between loads and an easier facility to keep clean.
It keeps unstable, un-wrapped pallets off the racking. To freeze fast, pallets have to be built for airflow — with specialized packaging or plastic layer dividers (“spacers”) between layers of cases — which means they can’t be stretch-wrapped. Those pallets are inherently unstable, prone to shifting, and take a very skilled operator to move without damage. Forcing them into racking locations up to 50 feet high is where they lean, shift, and fall: product loss, a serious safety hazard, and difficult retrieval and restacking at height. Floor-level freezing keeps these loads on the ground — eliminating the fall risk, lowering the operator skill required, opening up flexible material-handling options like walkie-riders, and cutting handling cost because floor positions are simply faster to access. Reserve the elevated racking for stable, fully wrapped storage pallets.
The trade is cubic density for faster, more uniform freezes, cleaner food-safety outcomes, simpler sanitation, and a dramatically safer floor — and with the QFM’s modular design you get it without sacrificing throughput: you scale capacity by adding floor units, not by forcing product into compromised airflow, heavy localized refrigeration load, congested traffic, and unstable pallets at extreme height.
Multi-Level Design Pattern
If you go up, three rules keep the design clean.
1. One circuit per level. This is the common electrical layout for stacked QFMs: a 5-level installation with 12 QFMs per level is fed by 5 circuits — one per level — rather than attempting to daisy-chain vertically between levels, which complicates cabling badly. Section 4 (Power) covers units-per-circuit limits; the per-level pattern also keeps lockout/tagout and troubleshooting level-by-level.
2. A beam above the top-level QFM is required. The unit clamps to the beam above and straddles the beam below; the top level is not exempt. Carry the extra beam in the racking design from day one — see Section 3: Racking.
3. QuickFreeze handles the lift. Upper-level installs use QuickFreeze’s own installation equipment and custom lift tooling to pick units up and place them on the level. Do not budget customer forklift time or third-party rigging for unit placement.
Retrofit Guidance: Answer the Position Question First
Every retrofit conversation starts the same way — get ahead of it.
When QFMs go into an existing freezer, the first two questions the operations team asks are always: “How many storage positions am I losing?” and “How many blast cell positions did I lose?” Present the answer before it is asked, as a side-by-side current-vs-proposed position count:
| Position type | Current | Proposed | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blast positions | (existing blast cells) | (QFM positions) | typically a large gain |
| Storage positions | (current count) | (count after conversion) | show it honestly |
| Total positions |
Fill this in for every room in scope. A retrofit that converts floor-level storage rows to QFM blast positions trades a known number of storage slots for a much larger blast throughput; making that trade explicit is what gets the project approved.
Design pitfall — reusing the blast-cell footprint. Placing QFMs in the footprint of demolished blast cells is usually inefficient — the cell footprint was shaped by the old equipment, not by rack geometry or airflow. Lay out QFM rows from the racking and evaporator positions instead, and account for the existing evaporators explicitly in the layout rather than working around them after the fact.
Retrofit hardware to expect. Two items show up on nearly every retrofit bill of materials: setback adapters, which adapt the QFM mounting where existing beam positions place the unit too far from the pallet face, and swing seals, which close the gap between unit and pallet on rack profiles that need them. As a scale reference, one recent 294-unit retrofit order carried 87 setback adapters and 174 swing seals — plan for these as line items, not contingency. Which positions need which hardware is determined from your measurements on the existing-racking form (MKT-296) and confirmed at the site visit; the final submittal indicates the position of each pallet, whether adapters are required (with part numbers), and the height used for AutoSeal.
Documents
Permanent URLs — always the current revision.
QFM Racking Guidelines
Level counts, beam requirements, and the full racking spec behind both placement patterns.
Existing Racking Form
Measure what you have — the fill-in form that determines adapter and swing-seal requirements per position.
Placement FAQ
From real retrofit and layout conversations.
Can QFMs go on the second level of pushback racking?
Yes, but it costs you: moving to the “B” level on pushback racking means looking at setback adapters and removing the pushback carts at that level. The reason floor-level is the default recommendation is precisely to avoid needing any of that. If you decide on the upper level anyway, QuickFreeze has its own installation equipment to pick the units up and place them.
How high can QFMs be installed?
The racking guidelines support 1 to 7 levels, and 7 high is the tallest field installation completed to date. Above the first level, plan one electrical circuit per level and a beam above the top-level unit.
Who lifts the units onto upper levels?
QuickFreeze does — the install crew brings its own lift equipment and a custom lift tool for unit placement. Customer material handling is not part of the unit-mounting scope.
How do I answer “how many positions do I lose?”
With a current-vs-proposed table of blast and storage position counts, per room, before the question is asked. It is the first thing every operations team wants to know, and the side-by-side format — existing blast cells and storage positions against proposed QFM positions and remaining storage — is the version that gets decisions made.
What extra hardware does a retrofit add over new construction?
Setback adapters where existing beam geometry sets the unit back from the pallet face, and swing seals where the rack profile needs the gap closed. Quantities are position-specific and come out of the MKT-296 measurements; the formal submittal lists adapter requirements and part numbers per position.
Check the Capacity Before the Layout
Position counts only matter if the refrigeration supports them — verify the load first, then place the units.