The supermarket chain Hy-Vee Inc.’s 64,000-square-foot store in Fairfield, Iowa, opened on April 12 as the company’s second Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified store. It is one of the few supermarkets in the country that has achieved U.S. EPA GreenChill Gold-Level certification.

An option for an integral air-cooled packaged DX cooling system specifically for kitchen applications is available on the company’s high-performing make-up air units.

The Icehouse is a three-story complex that will eventually include 36 green condominiums, a one-story parking garage and commercial property that replaces several aging buildings in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.

One thing that contractors can agree on is ease of installation and servicing makes their work life better and simpler. That’s something that the winners of the 2011 Dealer Design Awards in the Light Commercial category have in common.

Social media presents two primary choices: get involved or be left behind. Contractors have heatedly debated that statement, along with many other social media topics, for some time. More often than not, however, the argument circles back to social media relevance. With social media being so new, industry relevance is more a matter of opinion that could be argued from both sides.

This article should really be titled “Miracle Closing Technique for the Estimate-Getting Researcher.” As you will read, it’s really not a miracle at all. It’s more common sense. There are many kinds of customers, but the most classic might be the we’re-getting-estimates customer.

The Plug and Play Tech Center hosts a wide range of special events, from networking meetings, to investment expos, to speaker forums. “Sometimes we have 400 to 500 people in our meeting center, and maintaining a comfortable climate in the room can be a challenge,” said Michelle Chang, event coordinator.

The evolution of an industry and its impact on society often make an interesting study. Take portable air conditioning: Introduced to America in 1983 by Denso, a Japanese manufacturer of automotive products, portable air conditioning was first designed to cool workers on the assembly line.

With all the late-spring heat scorching the country, air conditioning systems are being asked to perform up to their full capacity in many areas. When they can’t keep up, for whatever reason - breakdown, replacement, or simple undersizing - portable cooling systems can literally get clients out of a tight spot.

Does it make a lot of sense for a commercial HVAC contractor, who specializes in rooftop unit service and replacement, to market his wares on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter? If you had suggested this to Jon Lazarus a few years ago, he might have wanted to find a straitjacket for you. But not now.