News
Res. halls to receive AC
Pointer Contributor
jlutz715@uwsp.edu
The summer heat may be put to an end with the new North Campus Chiller plan designed to cool the residence halls.
The plant will be built just northeast of the Allen Center and will be 3,273 square feet when completed.
“The idea was an engineered response to a need from Residential Living to have chilling capacity available for the new suite-style residence hall and the residence halls that are being remodeled one per year,” said Carl Rasmussen, campus planner.
The main question that usually comes up with a project of this magnitude is cost.
According to the draft prepared, the total cost of the unit will be $8,680,100. The Residential Living portion of this project will be financed through room rental rates. This means an increase of $93 per year for every room and an increase of $195 per year for those rooms receiving air-conditioning.
“I just think that is a lot of money for something that students might need two or three days out of the year,” said Brendan Gifford, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student.
According to Rasmussen, “The remodeling of eight residence halls in the DeBot complex, include the installation of four-pipe in-room heating and cooling equipment making air conditioning possible.”
Dennis Johnson of Ayres Associates, stated in his release to the public, “Piping will connect the new north campus chilled water system to the current south campus chilled water system. This connection will enable the central campus chilled water systems to be operated at peak efficiency and provide back-up capacity throughout the campus.”
The hope is that the chiller will not only cool the residence hss alls, but also make the current unit work more efficiently and provide back up if it were to crash.
Rasmussen said, “An engineering study was performed to develop the most cost-effective and efficient plan to size and locate the plant and distribution system for all the buildings of the north campus.” The project will offer new speed drive chillers that will bring significant savings in electricity consumption.
According to the proposal “Providing air conditioning in the residence halls is an indentified need to maintain solid summer conference attendance. Summer occupancy provides important income for Residential Living capital and operational budgets.”
Gifford said, “If they take a survey to see if students are for this then go for it, but if students aren’t willing to pay, it really isn’t worth it.”
Construction is planned to start in May of 2010 and be completed by August 2011.
