A new chiller for the Plant is on order. A chiller is a large air conditioner. It cools the chilled water to 40 for use in the cooling coils in the campus buildings. This installation will enable Utilities to meet the university's growing cooling demand into the year 2005. Complete installation will occur in the fall and winter of '97.
The never ending battle to minimize the dust generated with the Utilities operation continues. We will be installing a new unloading chute for our fly ash. This chute is designed to minimize the dust associated with the loading of ash trucks.
The last thing most of us want to think about right now is the frigid temperatures of December. But, here in Utilities, we are hard at work doing just that. Many of you may have noticed the increase of trucks in and out of the coal yard. We are receiving coal to stockpile for use during the winter.
The closing of the last Iowa coal mining operation means that all our coal needs must be met by shipping in coal. One of the most cost effective ways to move large amounts of coal is by barge on the river. This avenue is only open from March through November before ice makes barge traffic next to impossible. This means that utilities must get their winter coal supply stockpiled by November to avoid paying higher transportation costs.
As reported in the Winter '96 issue of Facilities News, Utilities is in the middle of a major project that will support the new Student Health Center and future buildings west of Bissell Road. The project includes installation of new utility services in the area north of Beyer Hall and Black Engineering. The new systems include a steam tunnel and direct buried steam piping, high voltage systems, chilled and domestic water mains, storm and sanitary systems, and telecommunication systems.
Overall the project is on schedule with the exception being the pavement replacement. The reopening of Bissell Road, originally scheduled for August 2, will probably be delayed a week. The concrete replacement in the area north of Black Engineering will proceed with priority being the road first and then the sidewalks. Most of the area north of Black Engineering should be open by mid August, weather permitting.
As part of this project, on Saturday, June 8 the electrical service to Black Engineering was off for about 8 hours. The outage started at 6 AM to allow Tyler Coddington, Roger Mouchka, and Tony Selch of Utilities and Hank Weuve of Campus Services to install additional high voltage switchgear in the substation east of Black Engineering. We completed this work with no problems.
Also, a chilled water outage was necessary to make connections to the mains just north of Pearson in the area between Marston and Black Engineering. During this outage, 16 building cooling systems were not operational. We scheduled the outage over the weekend as a courtesy to our customers.
The outage began at 3 PM June 28, shutting off chilled water in several buildings. Originally, we did not expect to have the chilled water back in service until about 10 PM Sunday. Things went better than expected with the chilled water being restored at 3 PM Saturday, June 29, ahead of schedule.
The crew completing this work was Marc Burg, Dave Chenevert, Carrol Lind, Maurice Phipps, Jim Wells, Willie Williams, and Mike Caddell of Utilities, Mechanical Distribution and Laverne Williams of Campus Services. Katie Baumgarn, Don Boyle, John Larson, Dave McVicker, and DPS provided assistance prior to the shutdown and during the startup.
Current work includes completing the direct buried steam piping and telecommunications conduit installation north of Beyer. Work continues on the electrical conduits adjacent to Black Engineering and installing high pressure steam piping in both existing and new tunnels. High voltage cable installation will start in late August. We are planning to have the steam, water, electrical, and sanitary sewer services to the Student Health Center operating by late October with all work on the project completed by the end of the year.
If you have any questions about these projects or related issues please contact Randy Larabee.