The heat was turned on in the majority of University buildings by last Monday, but residents can expect to still experience irregularities as certain "glitches" in the system need to be addressed, according to Thomas Forsberg, associate director of housing and residential life.
The University began heating buildings in the beginning of October, and the majority had their heat turned on by Oct. 20, according to the 2008 air conditioning to heating changeover schedule.
When the heat is first turned on it usually takes a couple of days to become operational, Forsberg said. Now that the heat is on, Facilities is hoping to "kick all of the bugs" out of the system, said Carlos Fernandez, assistant vice president of facilities operations and engineering.
Detailed documents have been made available on the Facilities Management Web site in an effort to educate the Brown community about the heating system on campus. But Clare Kim '11, a resident of Graduate Center Tower D, said that a large number of people "weren't very well informed" about the heating system, which she believes might have led to some of the confusion regarding the change.
Kim said she only discovered that her residence's cooling and heating system is controlled by a fixed thermostat and cannot be adjusted in individual rooms when she turned the valve on her radiator and had problems with leakage. When Facilities came to fix the leak, she was told that she should not be adjusting her radiator anyway. This system varies among buildings, since some residents in Minden and Barbour halls can control the heat in their own rooms.
In order to refine the heating system in the long term, Fernandez said numerous projects were underway to improve energy efficiency and reduce the University's carbon footprint.
Christopher Powell, director of sustainable energy and environmental initiatives, said one such project, dubbed retro-commissioning, focuses on getting the systems in older buildings to work the way "they should," and making them "state-of-the-art antique."
For example, Minden was recently renovated to give residents control over the heat in their own rooms. The heat in Minden used to be controlled by a single, old thermostat in the lounge on the ground floor, but the thermostat has now been replaced with individual control valves in each of the rooms. Although this particular transformation was successful, Powell said that "it's just not easy" to modernize old buildings. James Coen, director of maintenance services, explained that another project modernized the central heating plant by replacing aged machinery.
When the heat is not properly functioning in students' rooms, Forsberg said it's important that students contact Facilities Management right away so that the problem can be dealt with in a timely fashion.
