Building Our CoolBot Flower Cooler

Why a cooler matters and how we built the flower cooler of our dreams.

If there’s one thing we’ve quickly learned as zone 3 cut flower farmers in Northern BC, it’s that having the right infrastructure can make or break your season. With short windows of peak bloom and plenty of hot summer days, we knew we needed a proper way to keep our flowers fresh between harvest and delivery. Enter: the CoolBot.

This year, we built an 8' x 12' walk in cooler using the CoolBot system from storeitcold.com. And let us tell you, it has already become one of our favourite investments on the farm and we haven't even used it, yet.

Why a Flower Cooler is Essential

On a flower farm, freshness is everything. According to Chelsea Green Publishing’s guide to creating a flower farm, a cooler is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure you can invest in, even for farms as small as one acre. Without cool storage, your harvest window becomes incredibly tight and any delay in delivery can affect flower quality.

A flower cooler will allow us to:

• Harvest at the perfect time of day (early morning or late evening)

• Hold stems for a day or two when needed, without losing freshness (or even weeks, depending on the variety)

• Deliver bouquets that last longer in your home

• Prepare for markets and events more efficiently

• Keep the bouquet subscription process running smoothly without daily panic harvesting

Without a cooler, we’d be racing against the clock, and the heat. With one, we have room to breathe and room to plan. Literally.

How We Built Our CoolBot Cooler

We followed the DIY walk-in cooler guide from Store It Cold, and it made the whole process really approachable. The CoolBot system works by pairing a standard window air conditioner with a small controller that tricks the A/C into cooling far below its typical limit—creating a cold room that’s perfect for flower storage.

Here’s a breakdown of our setup:

• Size: 8' x 12', giving us plenty of space to store bouquets, buckets of blooms, and prep for market days

• Structure: We framed the walls ourselves and insulated them with rigid foam board insulation (at least R25 value)

• Cooling unit: An 18,000 BTU window A/C unit

• Controller: The CoolBot Pro, which was easy to install and syncs with our phone for remote temperature monitoring

We also added strong, easy-to-clean rolling shelving for flower buckets and bouquet prep, linoleum flooring  to handle spills and muddy boots, and a heavy duty insulated door to maintain a consistent internal temperature.

The cooler is powered with its own dedicated electrical line, and we’ve placed it in a temporary shaded area on the property to help it run efficiently throughout the summer months, until it can make it's way to it's permanent home behind our future Flower House. We also added a thermometer and hygrometer to monitor temperature and humidity levels inside the cooler, making sure it stays within the ideal range for flower storage.

And because we live in the North, where summers can be hot and short, and fall comes quickly, this cooler gives us the flexibility to store flowers safely during shoulder seasons and stretch the life of our blooms.

What It Means for You

The CoolBot cooler might not be the prettiest thing we’ve built on the farm, but it might be the most important. It means every bouquet you receive has been stored at the ideal temperature, hydrated properly, and handled with care.

It means:

• You’re getting longer lasting flowers

• We’re able to deliver fresher, more consistent quality all season long

• We can grow more, plan better, and waste less

It’s a small room, but it’s made a big difference.

And honestly? It just feels good to open that door and see rows of happy, healthy blooms waiting to head out into the world.

Thanks for following along as we keep building the behind the-scenes of Franklin & Co. Flower Farm. We can’t wait to share what this new addition allows us to do next.

Until next time,
Cory
Franklin & Co. Flower Farm