I was wondering if any of you have experience with Helmer Blood Bank refrigerators? I am thinking about asking for one this coming year.

Thanks,

Jane

We have several Helmer refrigerators. They are very reliable and they look quite modern. I highly recommend them.

Dawn,

Do you have the i series or the Horizon series? I'm wondering if the i series is worth the extra money. Also does your refrig do the high/low alarm checks? If it does how does it work?

Thanks!!

Jane

We have the horizon series. All of our temperature monitoring is done by the REES system so we don't need the i series. As for alarm checks, we don't do them since we have REES. We absolutely love the new Helmer we have, another one is being delievered this week.

We have the i series for the double door Helmer. Its great. We do the manuel high/low checks quarterly, and the system ones monthly. Yes, a bit of extra work but we are in New York.

My problem is the temperature charts, often tracing problems. Ours is two years old and the newer ones have improved.

We also have the double door Helmer refrigerator. We initially had a problem with the chart recorder, which took awhile until issue was rectified.

We have recently has some small parts come off the bottom of one door. This piece helped keep the door from swing all the weay open.

Overall we like the look of the helmer refrigerators and it keeps the temperature within the desired range. I do have the cheaper model, because of cost issue.

This spring we got the new i-Series Freezer and so for it has been really nice. We were a little concerned since it was just available in January but no complaints yet.

Check with your engineering department to find out the maximum voltage you can use on the refrigerators. I was about to purchase a Helmer Freezer but the voltage is too high on their freezers so I am currently looking at Jewett instead.

Our Operating Room purchased a Kelvinator Scientific (without consulting the Blood Bank) for blood storage. The Blood Bank is attempting to validate it, but we have some issues with the alarm setup. A burned out bulb (Low or High indicator) disables the audible alarm. There is also no "test" button to check the low or high visual indicators, so we would never know when a bulb is out and the alarm won't sound if the temp goes too high or low. Does anyone have experience with these? Does the FDA require certain criteria before a refrigerator can be labeled "Blood Storage Device" Technical Support has been no help whatsoever, it is a "new model and they are unfamiliar with it" Also, there is only one probe in the upper chamber for the entire cabinet and recorder chart combined??

We had Forma Refrigerators and freezers for years. Then we switched to Jewett. We have had MAJOR problems with our Jewett FFP freezer and have bought a Helmer. And are in the process of validating it.

We have several types of refrigerators at NIH. Helmer products always perform well for us. The folks at Helmer are very plesant to work with and the equipment looks modern.

our blood center has the Helmer frig with the high and low alarm checks, we do them every morning as part of our QC.

Do you have the same amount of storage capacity with the Helmer FFP freezers that you had with the Jewetts? We are having major problems with the new Jewett plasma freezers that we have gotten in in the last year, and I am ready to replace them, but was concerned about the storage capacity of the Helmers. Seems like the inner chamber is smaller according to the specs. How many FFP can you store in a Helmer?

I just went and counted. There are 8 shelves and we can easily put 20 boxed FFP per shelf (our FFP comes from ARC to give you an idea of the boxes I'm referring to). That would give you a total capacity of around 160 units of FFP.

If you run into the voltage problem, ask your Helmer rep to purchase a transformer for you. We did and the problem is solved.

To add to ChrisH comment. We purchased a Jewett freezer 2 and one half years ago and had their service people in regularly for months after (no easy task to get hold of them, either). It still does not work well--fans ice up regularly and several of the drawers have broken on their tracks. Quite frankly, I would never buy anything from Jewett again.

Along the lines with calynn, out Jewett fan would ice over and the drawers would feeze making it very hard to open. This freezer was less then 3 years old and we have discontinued using it. It was that bad.

We have 7 Helmer refrigerators. They are very reliable and the quality is good. The customer service is great. I would highly recommend them. (Also their platelet rotator, cell washers and serofuges.)

WE have switched to using entirely hemer products. very reliable and the customer support is excellent!

Jane,

Our decision to purchase the Helmer Refrigerators was based upon (1) the other items we had purchased from them and were satisfied with, (2) the response from the company when there were (a few) problems over the years, and (3) the fact that I had met the late Jerry Helmer when he and his sons were just getting this company started. Jerry's son Dave runs this family business now, and they appear very customer-oriented.

Alot of bells and whistles on the i-series. With deference to Dave Helmer and his design team, not certain you need that. Please note that there are no door springs to close the doors automatically, if you are used to that, and there are no door stops at the 90-degree angle to prevent the doors from hitting the wall or the door of another side-by-side refrigerator. Otherwise, 6-months into our ownwership, the staff just loves them!

We just bought a 2 door Helmer to be delivered April 5 and after reading all these posts, I even more excited, if that's possible. We haven't had a new blood bank refrigerator for over 15 years.