Issue date: 11/4/05 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Ethan Moore

While the geothermal project has been complete since early this semester, many students have continued to experience problems with hot water sources in the residence halls. When all of the hot water heaters for the residence halls were finally connected to the geothermal system, many students found the temporary disruption of hot water service to be a continuing problem. Until last week Martin Hall residents were frequently without hot water, and others reported unpredictable fluctuations in their water temperature.
Director of Physical Plant Lloyd Ryan said that the problems with the hot water heaters were remedied early last week.

"There has been a combination of problems with the hot water, but we hope they have all been addressed by now," Ryan said. "We haven't heard about any further problems since the beginning of [last week]."

The problems with the hot water were not a result of a flaw in the geothermal system, according to Ryan.

"When the geothermal system was installed, the hot water was changed out; Instead of gas, there are now ground source heat pumps for heat and domestic hot water," Ryan said. "The controls on the new ground source heat pumps had to be changed to a different type of control in order to provide enough hot water," he continued.

"There are two heat pumps in each building, and they weren't synchronized, so the back-up heat pump wasn't coming on when it was needed. The controls were changed to rectify that problem," Ryan said.

"There were also sporadic problems with the circulation pumps, not the geothermal pumps, which were pre-existing in the buildings," Ryan said.

The contractors and engineers for the geothermal project were called back to work on the problems, and Ryan said they believe the problems have been solved.

"We are still looking at other possible existing problems, though," Ryan said, "just so we cover all the bases."

Last week also saw the completion of the project to connect Hulen Hall to the district cooling loop. For several weeks contractors have been digging a trench behind Hulen, in the area between Veasey Hall and the Murphy House.

Unrelated to the geothermal project, this was an effort to increase the efficiency of cooling water for Hulen Hall, which previously featured two failing compressors for cooling.

"Hulen had two compressors that were very old and off line, that provided a lot of maintenance problems," Ryan said. "Now the building has been connected to the district cooling loop."

According to Ryan, there are two main cooling systems on campus, which are the district cooling loop and the geothermal heating and cooling. Geothermal heating and cooling is used in the six residence halls, and the buildings on the district cooling loop are D.W. Reynolds, M.C. Reynolds , Axciom Hall, Buhler, Fausett, and now Hulen.

"Cooling water is shared between these buildings, and it is a much more efficient system than the old compressors that Hulen was using," Ryan said.

That project was completed last week, and the ground has been recovered and the disrupted sidewalks have now been repaved.

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