The challenge: Turning down the heat without sacrificing comfort

	Howard Moss, area maintenance mechanic for the Pappajohn Business Building, opens the door into a room that contains one of the six air handlers that supply outside air for heating and cooling to residents of the building. Photo by Tim Schoon.

Likewise, the University has been turning on the heat. From the University Services Building to Hancher Auditorium and on out to the Oakdale campus, Facilities Services Group (FSG) employees have been readying heating systems to face another season of Mother Nature’s dip into frigidity.

Although summer is traditionally the time that the University has been able to make the biggest difference in energy consumption, this year there is an increased focus on continuing those efforts into winter as well. The soaring cost of heat last winter was part of the impetus, as is the expected rise in coal costs. And the current budget situation has made the changes all the more important.

So FSG has come up with a set of principles. Primary among them is that the University continue to be able to meet its institutional goals of teaching and research. (The full list of principles can be seen on-line at: www.uiowa.edu/~fusfsg/reports/EnergyConservation.pdf.)

The trick now facing FSG is how to turn these principles into reality. Energy-saving measures in an institution as large as the University are more complicated than turning the furnace down a notch or two and asking everyone to bundle up in woolly sweaters.

“There’s a range of what people need,” says Ann Rosenthal, a mechanical engineer for Operations and Maintenance in FSG. “We have animal care units and lab spaces with special temperature requirements.”

And because the University isn’t an 8-to-5 kind of place, it’s not as simple as setting the thermostat back at night or on weekends.

“There may be someone working on research at 8 a.m. Christmas morning,” says Ken Eichelberger, Area 2 maintenance manager. “People use the buildings at all hours of the day and night.”

In addition, simply rotating a dial or punching numbers on a keypad isn’t an option in most buildings.

“From the oldest to the newest, we have every kind of heating and cooling system on campus,” Rosenthal says.

A man charged with maintaining the heat and light in buildings at both ends of that spectrum is Howard Moss, area maintenance mechanic. Moss is responsible for the comfort of faculty, staff, students, and visitors in the eight-year-old Pappajohn Business Building (PBB). He also takes care of Calvin (built in 1884), Trowbridge (1917), and Gilmore (1910) halls.

Controlling heating and cooling systems in older buildings is especially tough. While the buildings’ heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems have moved beyond the days of fireplaces and open windows, some equipment, like that in Calvin Hall, still dates back to the ’60s (although newer control systems permit better temperature control and energy savings). And these upgrades have been retrofitted into spaces not designed for them, requiring maintenance mechanics to perch on ladders to change filters on air handlers and squeeze through tiny openings to replace belts on motors.

Then there’s PBB, where Moss changes filters in “the penthouse.”

While it’s not as luxurious as the name implies, the modern HVAC system in PBB lessens maintenance difficulties. And its control system makes it possible to use heating and lighting in ways that Moss and his co-workers Eichelberger and Tom Kueny, operations manager for the Tippie College of Business, hope will save energy, and money, for the University.

Last April, Moss and Kueny, with the support of Eichelberger, set out to make the system even more efficient. They began implementing their changes in May.

PBB’s advanced HVAC and control systems allow even small areas of the building to be controlled separately. Moss and Kueny surveyed faculty and staff to learn what hours and days the building is most heavily occupied, as well as when people are in offices, classrooms, and the library. With this information they’ve been able to lower temperatures and lighting in unused areas of the building.

“We tried the new system on our own offices first,” Moss says.

It took Moss a week and a half to reprogram the system, but now adjustments can be made relatively easily, as he sits at his computer.

In July, Moss says, they saved roughly 14 percent on electrical charges and 10 percent on chilled water (used for air-conditioning), and that was before the entire building had been reprogrammed.

Kueny stresses that they’ve had great cooperation from faculty and staff in the building.

“They understand the need for these changes and have adapted well,” he says.

Now it’s up to the residents of other campus buildings to adapt too. Rosenthal says that first on the list is asking staff to voluntarily set their wintertime thermostats to 68 degrees. Special temperature needs or problems should be reported to a contact person in each building (often the building mechanic), who generally knows best the quirks of their building’s HVAC systems and how to alter them for the comfort of building occupants.

“Summertime energy curtailment was successful because everyone helped,” Rosenthal says, “and that will be true in winter as well. Our goal is not to make people less productive and uncomfortable. We want to work with our customers to reduce energy costs.”

Article by Linzee Kull McCray