Every year, the state and the insurers want a boiler inspected, and some of those inspections are internal. “We have to take the boiler apart,” says Michael Redinger, who owns Straight Up Mechanical. A service job like that can take the whole day.
That work makes up a big share of the business. “We do a lot of boiler work,” he says. The company lists low- and high-pressure steam and annual state boiler inspections among its specialties, along with rooftop units and building controls.
Redinger started the company in 2025 after about 10 years in HVAC. The company takes care of a Delano parish, Tide Dry Cleaners, Forsman Farms and a host of multi-family buildings.
The parish first called him during a service emergency, a blown pneumatic HVAC control line. “I jump when they call,” he says. If a customer has a unit down or needs something done the next day, he will be there. “I’m going to get back to you, especially in a service emergency.” Late one Friday afternoon, a cremation service company in Rockford, Minnesota, asked for a walk-in cooler to be installed the next day, a Saturday. The customer was pleasantly surprised when Straight Up Mechanical delivered a quality installation the next day.
Redinger came to the trade by way of mechanical engineering, which he studied out of high school before deciding he wanted to spend more time in the field. He joined a union, learned commercial HVAC service there, and worked a couple of years in Washington State. Then he came back to Minnesota and started his own company.
He knows the business name sounds casual. “I’m a local guy that knows the trade that he’s in, and I’m looking to provide positive experiences for those people who aren’t looking for a corporate feel,” he says.
That preference shapes which customers he goes after. Commercial service is the main business. He tries to keep residential work small, though calls still come in, and he will give an estimate or show up for service. What he wants is a long-running positive relationship with each customer. “It’s not a transaction to me,” he says. “I’m looking to have great relationships with which I’m fired up to go to work every day.”
He has hired a couple of employees, and he tells them the same thing he tells himself. Every visit should leave the client with a positive outlook. “It’s encouraging for people to see a competent young man with a positive attitude come in and take care of something,” he says.
Some of the work calls for credentials that are harder to find. He tests RPZ valves, a type of backflow preventer on plumbing systems, and holds Minnesota state certification to do it. “It’s a special certification that not a lot of even plumbers have,” he says. The company also holds Master City of Minneapolis Competency Cards for gas fitter, refrigeration, steam/hot water and warm air/ventilation. One customer’s review describes another side of the commercial work: a multi-family pool-room make-up air unit replaced and running again the same day, with Redinger walking the customer through how to keep it maintained.
Straight Up serves the west metro, in Hennepin, Wright and Carver counties.
Redinger sees the company eventually bringing a professional engineer on staff, “evolving into providing design & engineering services.” He also wants to take on more commercial installations, boilers included. That means steam boilers, he says, “which are a thing of the past, but still used in industrial applications.”
