How to Make a Freezer in RimWorld That Actually Freezes | 1.6 Tool

RimWorld Freezer Tool • 1.6.4633

Stop Food Rot Cold: Build a Freezer That Actually Freezes

Need it working now? Build a roofed 5x6 room, place one Cooler with blue in and red out, set it below zero, and keep traffic off the only door. The numbers and layouts here are tuned for 1.6.4633 rev1266.

how to make freezer rimworld cooler icon Cooler: 90 steel + 3 comps
how to make freezer rimworld simple meal icon Freeze line: 0C or lower
how to make freezer rimworld generator icon Full-load budget: 200W per cooler
how to make freezer rimworld pemmican icon Long-life backup: pemmican still matters
how to make freezer rimworld hero machine crop
Quick Solution (5-Minute Build)
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Starter blueprint crop. The room is tiny on purpose: fewer tiles means fewer cooler cycles and less recovery time after every door open.

Materials (Vanilla)

  • 1 Cooler: 90 steel + 3 components.
  • 1 room: fully enclosed, fully roofed, ideally 5x6 interior for the first freezer.
  • 1 door: fine for low traffic. Add a 1x2 buffer or second door if cooks and haulers spam the entrance.
  • Power margin: budget around 200W per Cooler under load, not wishful idle draw.

Build Order

  1. Build the closed room first and make sure every tile is roofed.
  2. Install the Cooler in a wall slot with the cold face inward and the hot exhaust outward.
  3. Set target temperature to -2C. Go colder in heat waves or high-traffic kitchens.
  4. Keep the freezer off your main hallway. If pawns path through it, you are fighting door events, not room size.
  5. Put butcher and stove 1-2 tiles away instead of making the kitchen cross the cold room.
Why it works: a closed room, one or two wall coolers, and a negative target temperature are enough to keep food frozen so it stops spoiling.
The 5-Minute Troubleshoot If It Won't Freeze

Most bad freezers are not mysterious. They are usually one of these eight failures, in roughly this order.

  • Wrong target: +2C refrigerates, it does not freeze. Start at -2C and drop lower in extreme heat.
  • Cooler flipped: the cold side must point into the freezer. The hot side cannot dump into a hallway you expect to stay cool.
  • Room is not fully indoors: missing roof tiles or a broken wall stop the room from behaving like a freezer at all.
  • Door spam: if cooks, haulers, animals, and colonists all use the same entrance, treat the room like it is one climate tier hotter.
  • Too many tiles for one unit: a day-one 5x6 is forgiving; a huge stock barn is not.
  • Hot side trapped: roofed exhaust pockets keep feeding the Cooler its own waste heat.
  • Power starvation: one Cooler under load wants 200W. Brownouts look like temperature bugs.
  • Stockpile confusion: meals and raw food need to be in the cold room, while rotting corpses should be isolated unless you intentionally allow them.
Fastest readout to trust: check room status, roof coverage, door traffic, and Cooler orientation before adding more machines. Players often overbuild cooling to fix a sealing mistake.
Sizing, Power & Biome Tool

Cooler Count Planner

These rules of thumb start from room size and outside heat, then get nudged by traffic and whether you built an airlock.

Live Result

Game version: 1.6.4633 rev1266
Recommended Coolers 1
Full-Load Draw 200W
Battery Reserve 400 Wh
Setpoint -2C

One Cooler is usually enough for a 5x6 room in mild weather if the room is fully roofed and traffic is controlled.

    Rule-of-Thumb Table

    Inside Tiles Mild Warm Hot Scorching
    25 or less 1 1 2 3
    26-40 1 2 2 3
    41-64 2 2 3 4
    65-100 3 3 4 5

    Biome Start Point

    Pick your biome Tundra 1 Cooler Temperate 1 Cooler + buffer Desert 2+ Coolers Low traffic Single door ok Kitchen hub Add an airlock Heat wave Drop to -5C 
    Freezer values (1.6.4633 rev1266)
Buildings_Temperature.xml
  Cooler:
    cost = 90 Steel + 3 ComponentIndustrial
    basePowerConsumption = 200
    energyPerSecond = -21
    canPlaceOverWall = true
    isAirtight = true

ResearchProjects_2_Electricity.xml
  AirConditioning:
    description = freezers for storing perishable goods

Buildings_Power.xml
  WoodFiredGenerator:
    basePowerConsumption = -1000
    Advanced: Airlocks, Power & DLC Notes

    Airlock Variants

    Single 
    OUT
[D]
[F]
    Double 
    OUT
[D][D]
  [F]
    S-lock 
    OUT
[D]
 .
[D] [F]
    Vac barrier 
    OUT
|| [D]
   [F]

    Single-door freezers are acceptable for low traffic. Once your cook line and hauling route share the same entrance, the airlock pays for itself in stability.

    Power Budget Card

    • 1 Cooler loaded: about 200W.
    • 2 Coolers loaded: 400W. Plan reserve around worst case, not best case.
    • 1 wood-fired generator: about 1000W, enough to cover several Coolers and still leave room for kitchen machines.
    • Heat waves: pre-chill to -5C, then let batteries absorb door spikes instead of watching food hover around zero.
    Coolers cycle around a target temperature instead of sitting at maximum load forever, which is why good sealing and low door traffic matter so much.

    Infestation Note

    Infestation checks care about underground room conditions, including roof and temperature-related factors, not just map mood.

    Practical takeaway: cold mountain freezers can double as spawn-denial space, but do not rely on that alone. Use it as a biasing tool, not a magical shield.

    Odyssey / Vac Barrier

    Vac barriers are an Odyssey DLC option and should be treated as a separate upgrade path rather than a baseline freezer requirement.

    For most colonies, a normal airlock solves the real problem faster: repeated door temperature spikes.
    Kitchen Flow & Stockpile Settings
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    Keep the door near the work triangle: freezer, stove, butcher. Long haul paths cost more temperature than most players expect.
    how to make freezer rimworld stockpile settings crop
    Storage settings matter. Freezer logic is only half climate; the other half is whether the right items are actually using the room.
    how to make freezer rimworld butcher table icon Kitchen Flow
    • Put the butcher table in a separate dirty room if you can. Its cleanliness penalty is -15, which is exactly the wrong vibe for a kitchen hub.
    • Stove, ingredient shelf, and freezer door should form a short triangle, not a corridor marathon.
    • If the freezer is also your corpse room, split it. Meal traffic and corpse traffic should not fight over the same temperature envelope.
    how to make freezer rimworld vent icon Storage Rules
    • Allow raw food + meals in the main freezer. Pemmican can live elsewhere because it already lasts.
    • Allow Rotten and Allow Fresh are separate stockpile controls, so rotten-item handling should be intentional.
    • Corpses deserve a dedicated cold room unless you intentionally want them with food for emergency butchering.
    Game Values + Further Resources

    Core Facts

    • `ThingDefs_Buildings/Buildings_Temperature.xml`: Cooler cost, 200W draw, `energyPerSecond = -21`, airtight wall placement.
    • `Concepts_NotedSelfshow.xml`: freezer tutorial concept explicitly points players to negative target temperatures and frozen food permanence.
    • `SpecialThingFilterDefs/SpecialThingFilters.xml`: storage includes native rotten / fresh filters.
    • `ResearchProjects_2_Electricity.xml`: AirConditioning is the research gate for real electric freezers.

    Mechanic Notes

    • Food spoilage and freezing are separate mechanics, so staying below zero matters more than just “feels cold enough”.
    • Doors and vents exchange room temperature, which is why airlocks and low traffic stabilize freezers so well.
    • Mountain infestations care about more than one factor, so cold rooms help, but they are not absolute protection.
    • Target temperature, room sealing, and exhaust placement matter more than wall material in most normal colonies.
    Temperature mechanics Cooler stats Infestation behavior Internal airlock guide Solar flare survival Colony layout guide
    Patch timeline
    • July 11, 2025: Odyssey + 1.6 baseline lands.
    • July 29, 2025: 1.6.4535 fixes diagonal wall vacuum leakage.
    • August 28, 2025: 1.6.4566 refines Odyssey-era vacuum behavior.
    • Current game version: 1.6.4633 rev1266.