Jeff Daurer
by Joe King
While the snap of fall in the air has many contemplating the winter ahead, planners in the Division of Finance and Facilities already are focusing on next summer, when a major project will shut down a stretch of Normal Road for several weeks and disrupt much of the East Campus.
Scheduled to begin in April and run until August, the project involves the installation of large pipes to carry chilled water around the East Campus that ultimately will allow the university to eliminate the stand-alone chiller units and cooling towers used to cool those buildings. The project also includes construction of a new chilled water plant on what is now the northeast corner of the Campus Life Building parking lot.
Ultimately, the project will save the university about $400,000 a year in energy costs, said Jeffrey Daurer, director of capital budgeting and planning for the Division of Finance and Facilities.
Chilled water cooling is also much more environmentally friendly, and will make the campus a more beautiful, quieter place when the existing chillers are decommissioned and removed. Many of the air conditioning units to be retired are 25 to 40 years old, well beyond their useful life.
But before things get cooler and greener, there will be a few annoyances next summer, said Daurer, who met last week with about 20 department heads and managers from buildings most likely to be affected by the project.
“This is a major project, and there are going to be some headaches, so we are trying to give people as much advance notice as possible so that they can plan ahead and make adjustments,” Daurer said.
Chief among the inconveniences will be the closure of Normal Road between Lincoln Highway and Lucinda for a period of eight to 10 weeks as crews dig through the pavement to install the chilled water pipes beneath the roadway from the north side of Adams Hall to the south end of Davis Hall.
In addition to the work on Normal, the project will require the following (see map for details):
Ultimately, the new pipes will connect to existing pipes (installed in 2003 when Gilbert Drive was rebuilt) completing a loop around most of the East Campus
All of that work will not be done simultaneously but in stages. A schedule for how the project will proceed will be developed after a contractor is selected. Regular project updates will be posted at www.niu.edu/chiller as the project approaches and begins. The first updates should appear in late January or early February.
“We plan to do our best to keep the campus community aware of where we will be digging at any given time to minimize disruptions as much as possible,” Daurer said.
The water lines will be installed by the end of next summer, but the chilled water plant probably will not come online until the spring of 2010.
When it does, the following buildings will be converted to chilled water cooling: Altgeld Hall, Campus Life, Faraday Hall, Faraday West, Founders Library, the Health Service Center (including the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, University Police and Telecom), the Holmes Student Center, Gilbert Hall, Lowden Hall, Montgomery Hall, the Music Building, the Psychology/Computer Science Building, Swen Parson Hall, the Visual Arts Building, Williston Hall and Wirtz Hall.
Other buildings, such as Still Hall, Still Gym, Adams Hall, Davis Hall and McMurray Hall will require some modifications, but could be converted to chilled water cooling in the future.
Furthermore, the new chiller plant eventually could cool Anderson Hall, the College of Engineering and Barsema Hall with the extension of chilled water lines northward. Adding those buildings to the chilled water system should result in an additional savings of several hundred thousand dollars a year, Daurer estimated.
The project has been on the books for several years, and has received earmarks of $7.7 million and $7.8 million from the state Capital Development Board and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity respectively.
The work has been on hold because the CDC money has been frozen, but that agency recently released the funds on the condition that NIU make up $3.9 million in additional costs now needed to complete the project (due to rising prices since the original approval). Eddie Williams, executive vice president and chief of operations, told the Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee that the long-term benefits of the new plant are important enough that the university will be able to find the money within the Finance and Facilities budget to get the project done. The project won unanimous approval from the NIU Board of Trustees.