ENERGY STAR LED Lighting Will Make Your Business Shine

March 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Northeast Cooling LLC is an ENERGY STAR Partner

With Earth Day quickly approaching in April, and a general push to do as much as we can to conserve natural resources, it’s only RIGHT to mention commercial refrigeration lighting. Okay, so commercial refrigeration lighting isn’t the sexiest part of your business, but it is an integral one. It’s essential, or at a minimum desirable, to showcase your products in light that shows their best side. Enter ENERGY STAR Qualified LED lighting products. What is LED lighting? LED stands for light-emitting diode. LEDs are small light sources that make lighting more efficient and durable than incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. LEDs emit light in a specific direction, while other types of bulbs emit light and HEAT in all directions. LED lighting uses both light and energy more efficiently while generating almost no HEAT. This helps your refrigeration system run more efficiently, saving you hard earned money, while preserving our energy sources. How are ENERGY STAR Qualified LED … [Read more...]

“Business Cards Suck. Hashable is awesome.”

March 4, 2011 by 1 Comment
Hashable Social Network Logo

  Could it be true there will be no more trading of business cards around the proverbial water cooler at networking events for this Chicago based Ice Machine Repair guy? If Hashable has its way, that’s exactly how things will go. During a recent interview with Fast Company, Michael Yavonditte, CEO of Hashable, said he wants his new brainchild to change the face of networking.  Hashable takes LinkedIn, Twitter, and Foursquare to all new levels with simple hashtagging. You check-in with people instead of just places as with Foursquare, you can exchange electronic business cards via a LinkedIn connection, and you can have all this posted directly to your Twitter feed for the world to see.  On top of that, there’s a leaderboard feature to provide some competition among friends. The leaderboard ranks users by “Hashcred.” This way you can see who the real movers and shakers are within your network. Yayonditte goes on to say that, "People are really interested in … [Read more...]

Avoid Refrigeration Break Downs During Chicago Blizzard Weather

January 31, 2011 by 1 Comment
Chicago Blizzard 2011

A large storm system is approaching Chicago.  Word on the street is that this could be the biggest Chicago blizzard in a long long time.  While this type of weather can be fun for kids who are looking for a few days off of school, it can be a nightmare for Chicago restaurants. Here are a few reasons why. These winters are often typical to Chicago, and they can lead to big problems with commercial refrigeration equipment.  Extremely cold weather can cause coolers and commercial freezers to run warm.  Large amounts of snow fall can also cause equipment to break down and lead to costly repairs. This is especially true when the compressor units of your commercial refrigeration are located outside where drifting snow can get drawn into cooling condensers.  When this happens the compressors can shut off due to an internal safety switch.  During times of snow accumulation and or drifting snow, care should be taken to insure outdoor compressor units don’t get buried in snow. … [Read more...]

Commercial Refrigeration and Freezer Energy Star Definitions

November 4, 2010 by Leave a Comment
energy_star_commercial_refrigeration

As a Chicago commercial refrigeration and ice freezer maintenance, repair, and sales company…one of our passions and specialties is green refrigeration.  As part of our business, education is an important issue for green initiatives.  The more we educate our customers and the public about the ability to save both money and energy the more we all win.  This is part one of a two part education series regarding ENERGY STAR products.  In this post, we’ll be covering commercial refrigerators and freezers. Commercial Refrigerators and Freezers Are Energy Work Horses: For businesses like supermarkets, restaurants and hospitals…refrigeration is an absolute necessity.  Many foods and medicines need to stay cold or frozen and therefore commercial refrigeration equipment and commercial freezers are on around the clock 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.  Because of this, commercial refrigeration and freezers use a tremendous amount of energy.  This cost of doing business comes at … [Read more...]

R22 Refrigerant Is Being Phased Out. Start Thinking Retrofit!

August 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

What type of gas does your commercial refrigeration equipment use?  Is it time to consider a change?  Northeast Cooling is here to help! R22 Refrigerant is being phased out by the Montreal Protocol Act.  This ozone depleting refrigerant is is used in many air conditioning and refrigeration applications world wide, and this type of  gas is very commonly used in the Chicagoland area.  The sale of new R22 equipment is no longer allowed.  As of January 1st, 2010 the consumption and production of R22 gas has been reduced by 75%. By the year 2015 it will be 90% reduced.  The gas will be 99.5%  phased out by the year 2020. (source EPA HCFC Phaseout Schedule) This has happened before, one of the first gasses to be completely phased out was R12 in 1995.  After the production of R12 stopped the price rose by hundreds of dollars.  It was used in air conditioning and refrigeration. Retrofit (replacement gasses) became available. This allowed technicians to convert the equipment to … [Read more...]

Team Refrigeration’s Big Day @ #fijihunt Event!

August 15, 2010 by 2 Comments
Sky High Cocktail Image FijiHunt

Team Refrigeration had a blast participating in Fiji Water Urban Hunt this weekend! @Leyla_A did a great job putting the event together. We would like to thank all the other sponsors who helped make this event happen & provided great prizes. The companies who got involved in this event all know how great social media is at connecting people. This event is a great example of how social media brings people together online & in real life (IRL)! Upon arriving @SushiSambaChi I ordered the Churrasco Burger. It came with crispy onions, chorizo mayo & a pretzel bun. It was delicious. My partner @ChicagoDMBlover showed up a short while later & we started gearing up for the scavenger hunt. We both had plenty of extra batteries for the smart phones & I brought a net book. We took off for Navy Pier after receiving our clues. The first place we hit was Bubba Gumps on the pier. We had to take a picture of the bartender making a VeeV Coctail & post the ingredients on … [Read more...]