PanelTX is based in Parker County. We build refrigerated and freezer warehouse facilities here — insulated panel envelopes, cold docks, and the glycol underfloor systems that keep a freezer slab from heaving. When the job is down the road, the crew and the panel stock are already here.
A freezer built on grade is slowly refrigerating the ground underneath it. Insulation below the slab slows that down, but it does not stop it — it only delays how long the frost front takes to work its way into the soil.
Once the subgrade freezes, the water in it expands. The ground lifts. That lift is not even across the slab, so what you get is a floor that heaves in the middle or at one end, cracks along the high points, doors that stop closing square, and racking that comes out of plumb. By the time it is visible, the fix is demolition of the floor. There is no patch for frost heave.
A glycol loop is how you prevent it. PEX tubing is laid in a grid beneath the slab insulation and a warmed glycol and water solution is circulated through it continuously, holding the subgrade a few degrees above freezing. The frost front never reaches the soil, so the ground never moves.
Glycol is the better system over the life of a building than the electric resistance cable sometimes used instead. It runs on far less energy, it can often reclaim waste heat off the refrigeration system rather than buying heat outright, and — the part that matters most — the mechanical parts that can fail are a pump and a manifold you can reach. Buried resistance cable that fails is under a hundred yards of concrete.
The design points that actually decide whether it works: tube spacing and loop lengths sized to the slab, the manifold located outside the freezer envelope where it can be serviced without entering the cold space, subgrade temperature sensors so you know the system is doing its job rather than assuming, and the right glycol concentration for the temperature you are holding.
The one thing to know: this cannot be retrofitted. The tubing goes in before the slab is poured. If you are planning a freezer facility in Parker County and the concrete is scheduled, that decision needs making now — not after the building is up.
If the slab has not been poured, call us now — the underfloor decision has to be made before the concrete. We will walk the site and price the envelope, the floor system, the doors, and the refrigeration as one scope. 682-402-4080.
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