Questions contractors and project teams ask us.
The things people call and ask before they send drawings. If yours is not here, the phone is faster than any page.
(216) 631-8080 · Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM
What we do
Does D.W. Ross install what it supplies?
It depends on the line. Insulated panels and cooler and freezer doors are sold either way: installed by D.W. Ross, or supplied material-only with our people on the phone while your contractor installs. Building products — windows, doors, flooring, FRP and laminated panels — are supplied, not installed. We work alongside the contractor doing that work.
Insulated panels, freezer doors and temperature-controlled flooring
Do you service doors and panels you did not sell?
We back what we sell. We will evaluate and quote replacing an existing freezer or cold-storage door with one we supply, and we consult on temperature-controlled environments and freezer systems that have failed, including ones we did not build. We do not run a general repair crew, install doors bought elsewhere or fix other contractors' work. Where a federal inspection citation puts a food plant's processing at risk, we will review it and may remediate. Repairs are quote-based and scoped to the product lines we sell or service. Call the office and ask for Don Ross.
Cold storage
Why does a freezer floor need insulation under the slab?
Because the floor is part of the envelope. Keep pulling heat out of a room and you pull it out of the ground beneath it; water in that ground freezes, frozen ground expands, and the slab is what is above it. The result is heaving and cracking, doors and seals that stop meeting, damage transferred into the walls and structure, and storage area that stops being usable. Severe cases are a teardown rather than a repair.
What decides which insulation board goes under a freezer slab?
Load, and what will sit on it. Sub-slab boards are graded by compressive strength, commonly 25, 40 and 60 psi under ASTM C578, and freezer floors take the high-load grades. Extruded polystyrene at roughly R-5.0 per inch is the usual material. Which grade and what assembly is a project decision made against the slab, the racking and the operating temperature, and it is one we would rather make with you before the pour than diagnose afterward.
Is a blast-freezer door just a colder freezer door?
No, and treating it as one is how openings fail. The temperature difference across a blast-freezer opening is far more severe than a standard freezer runs, and the door is built for it rather than adapted to it. Sliding and personnel versions are both their own products. Which door belongs in an opening comes out of the application — operating temperature, how often it cycles, what goes through it, the aisle beside it, whether it is automated, and whether it is on the egress route.
When should we use stainless steel doors and panel faces?
When the room is hard on everything in it. Caustic wash-down and corrosive process environments take apart an ordinary finish, and stainless is the answer there, chosen for corrosion resistance and for how it holds up to being cleaned aggressively, every shift.
Stainless steel cooler and freezer doors for wash-down rooms
Controlled environments
Do insulated panel systems only apply to refrigeration?
No. The same envelope builds any room whose inside conditions are part of what is made in it: clean rooms, laser and water-jet cells, electronic assembly, specialty and laminated glass, pharmaceutical and life-science space, packaging and inspection lines, robotics cells, and data centers. Interior panel systems are commonly available in a 2 to 8 inch thickness range, specified against the room rather than read off a chart.
What does D.W. Ross actually do on a data center?
The environmental and access-floor side: the temperature-controlled envelope, elevated removable access floors on pedestals, and the underfloor space where power, network and communications infrastructure runs and stays reachable. We are not the mechanical, electrical or IT contractor, and we will tell you plainly where our scope ends.
Working with us
Can you work from our drawings?
Yes. Consultation and design happen against the architect's and general contractor's documents, before material is ordered, while the decisions are still cheap to change.
Where does D.W. Ross work?
Primarily Ohio, and nationally when the project warrants it. The company has supplied work well outside the region where the job justified it.
How long has D.W. Ross been in business?
Charles Ross started the company in 1921. His son Donald incorporated it in 1972 and the name on the building is his. Kyle and Garrett are the fourth generation and are in the business now.
Why is there no pricing on this site?
Because there is no honest number to put on a page. A panel envelope, a door schedule and a window package are priced against the building: the temperature, the span, the openings, the finish and what the contractor is doing around them. Describe the project and we will scope it properly.
More depth on the thinking behind these answers is in our insights, where the outside numbers are sourced and dated.
Ask a hard question. You'll get a real answer.
Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM. 3195 West 63rd Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44102.