Industry Blog

Small project or large, Crosstown Mechanical can do it all! Our technicians are what set us apart from the competition. We have only the best, licensed professionals so we can provide you with value. We don't want to just help you with your project, we want to partner with you to provide the best engineered refrigeration and HVAC system to fit your needs.

Call us today at 651-645-7020 with questions. Pat in our Service Department or Dave in Special Projects will get you what you need for a price you can afford. No matter your need, our team can help.

Look, Crosstown is not just another mechanical refrigeration contractor operated by a conglomerate or Board of Directors. We, the owners, Pat and Dave, came from the service and install field. We're technicians, not salesman, and we see a lot of new products for refrigeration systems that claim to save energy. We can debunk most of these claims, but there is one product that actually will save you energy and money. Here's how.

We're going to get a little technical here. With freezers, and most refrigerators, you have a defrost cycle. This defrost cycle uses electric heaters on the back of the evaporator coil and inside the drain pan to melt the ice and/or frost from the coil. This is traditionally done with a timeclock and this clock is set to defrost your coils on the most humid of days. You know as well as we do that here in Minnesota it's only humid three to five weeks a year. Most businesses dont want problems with a coil frosting up and causing product loss so their timeclocks are set to defrost for the worst conditions.

The control on this product, however, is smart. It senses coil temperature, chamber temperature, superheat and also looks at runtime. It is a refrigeration system controller and can be used with an electronic expansion valve to fine tune not only the defrost but also the temperature precisely down to a tenth of a degree. We have tested this control and are very excited to announce that we took multiple Dairy Queen freezers running defrosts four times a day down to four times a week! Just imagine how much money you can save if your defrost was pulling 40 amps for 45 minutes four times a day and now it's 40 amps for 18 to 35 minutes four times a week through a pulse-enabled, managed controller! This control also is web-enabled allowing you to recieve email alerts on system problems well before you lose valuable product! You can even connect multiple units together for redundancy.

The sky is the limit with this new control technology. Not only that, but these units are also affordable! Call us today for more details so you can start saving money tomorrow. We guarantee it!

When Bartley Blume decided to "shed the shackles of corporate bondage" and take home brewing to the next level, he called us. It's a story of a home brewer going big, but not with beer. He decided to distill alcohol and open the first brewstillery in the Twin Cities called Bent Brewstillery http://www.bentbrewstillery.com.  We are engineering a direct fire burner package to be installed under this 500 gallon still in which he will use in his process. The challenge is to "make something rather than buy something" as Bartley puts it. Bartley believes that direct fire carmelizes the sugars in a different manner than steam-jacketed stills do and therefore will produce better flavors. Stay tuned for more on this project as it progresses! Contact us with your plans to bring home brewing to the microbrewery level. We have assisted many microbreweries in the Twin Cities with everything from process piping, brewhouse installations, and chiller systems for the fermentation process to walk-in refrigerators for the final product!

One of our valued customers specified the need for a backup refrigeration system due to the temperature-sensitivity of their stored product.  Alerton DDC Integrated Controls cycles each of their refrigeration systems every 24 hours. It the event of a mechanical failure of the refrigeration system, the backup system starts and now notifies engineering of the issue. Now they can move to immediate remediation and ensure their product is kept at necessary temperatures to prevent loss or damage of valuable inventory.