Inside the Build: What Actually Goes Into a Custom Chiller Install

Every chiller we ship looks similar from the outside: the same steel, the same compressors, the same nameplates. What’s different every single time is what’s underneath—the application.

No two production floors run the same temperature curve, the same duty cycle, or the same downtime tolerance. That’s the part customers don’t see in a spec sheet, and it’s the part our team spends the most time on before a single weld happens.

Our recent installation at Waterbrook Winery, a flagship estate of Precept Wine, is a good example of what that process actually looks like in practice.

The Application

Waterbrook, located just outside downtown Walla Walla, Washington, has been one of the anchor estates of the Walla Walla Valley appellation since the early days of the region’s emergence as a world-class wine area. Today, it operates as a flagship brand within Precept Wine, a Seattle-based company managing more than 30 wine labels and a substantial production and distribution footprint across the Pacific Northwest.

For a winery, precise temperature control isn’t a preference—it’s a production requirement. Fermentation temperature management is one of the most consequential variables in wine quality. Glycol chilling systems that drift, cycle erratically, or go down during peak fermentation season create quality and financial risks that winemakers take seriously.

Before design even starts, our engineering team pulls load data, ambient conditions, water chemistry, and future capacity plans from the customer’s site—not just their current numbers, but where their production is headed in three to five years. Sizing a chiller for today’s load while ignoring tomorrow’s growth is one of the most common—and expensive—mistakes we see in the industry.

For Waterbrook, that forward-looking lens went beyond capacity. When its operations team began evaluating chiller options, the conversation quickly moved past refrigerant type to refrigerant strategy. Like many commercial operations in agriculture and food processing, Waterbrook was planning on a longer horizon than a single equipment cycle. The question wasn’t only what would work today, but what would still be the right decision in 10 to 15 years.

“We’re not selling a box. We’re selling uptime for the next fifteen to twenty years. That means asking harder questions up front—about their process, their growth plans, and their maintenance staffing—so the system we design actually fits the operation, not just the current job order.”

The Build

Once the design is locked, the build itself is where much of the reliability gets engineered in: redundant components, accessible service points, and controls that give the customer visibility into system health from day one—not just when something breaks.

For Waterbrook, that meant a six-refrigeration-compressor Elite 290 chiller running R-290 propane refrigerant, paired with an oversized air-cooled condenser to keep pace with Walla Walla’s summer ambient-temperature swings during peak crush and fermentation.

The numbers behind the build speak for themselves:

• GWP of approximately 3—well below the EPA’s 700 GWP threshold, not just by a margin but by a factor.
• 22-to-1 refrigerant charge reduction compared with a conventional system.
• Tighter superheat control, more responsive load following, and consistent capacity at the design setpoint—all of which translate directly to fermentation temperature stability.

R-290 is a natural refrigerant that predates the HFC era entirely. Whatever the regulatory trajectory looks like over the next 20 years, this chiller isn’t at risk of becoming noncompliant—a forward position that matters not only for Waterbrook, but also for how Precept Wine plans equipment decisions across its broader portfolio.

This installation is one of a growing number of food and beverage projects moving to ultra-low-GWP refrigerants ahead of regulatory requirements. The calculus is straightforward: the engineering investment required to comply today is no greater than the engineering investment required to comply in three years, and equipment purchased today has a 15- to 20-year life. Getting that decision right matters.

“We wanted a decision we wouldn’t have to revisit in five years. The Elite 290 gave us that, and G&D made the whole process easy.”

 

The Handoff

“A good install isn’t finished when the unit is running. It’s finished when the customer’s team knows how to run it, service it, and read its own diagnostics without calling us every time something looks unfamiliar.”

That’s really the throughline across every project we take on: design for the application, build for reliability, and hand over a system the customer’s own team can own.

It’s a longer process than pulling a chiller off a shelf, but it’s the reason our installations are still running well past their expected service life—and why Waterbrook’s cooling system is built to outlast whatever comes next in refrigerant regulation.

Want to see the technical details behind this specific project, including capacity, redundancy configuration, and the controls package? Contact Us