The Big Four

In the mid-1960's, when aesthetically minded planners sat at the drawing table to design the Science Center, their idea of "efficiency" was insuring that the smoke from a cigarette left the building through the ventilation system within ten seconds.

..Last summer, when inflation-conscious experts combed the University to find ways to cut back on the Faculty's energy budget, one of their main recommendations for increasing efficiency included changing the Science Center's extravagant and wasteful ventilation system.

"You can play the Science Center like an organ," Frederick H. Abernathy, McKay Professor of Mechanical Engineering, says when describing the vast blower system that pumps air in and out of the eight-year-old building. One of the most inefficient of the 175 or so buildings under the jurisdiction of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Science Center is the youngest of what Abernathy and his team of efficiency investigators like to call "the Big Four": the Faculty buildings that consume--and waste--the most energy each year.

The Biology Labs, the Chemistry Labs and Williams James Hall share the honors with the Science Center; together the four eat up 30 per cent of the Faculty's total energy budget. The University built these structures before the energy crunch, and most of them--like the over-ventilated Science Center--reflect the lack of energy-efficient planning. But energy costs skyrocketed last spring--this year's budget for energy is half again as large as last year's--the Faculty commissioned a group of experts to propose means for reducing needless consumption in those buildings without affecting the day-to-day life of the University.

So last summer Abernathy, a friend and six students (with a little help from some engineers) scoured the Big Four--as well as the entire Yard, a House or two, some athletic facilities, and other academic buildings--and recently submitted a building-by-building roster of preliminary recommendations. One of the prime movers behind the project, Abernathy urged the Faculty to let him survey the buildings because he was convinced that a relatively small investment of manpower, time and money would eventually pay off. "I thought I would devote a little time to save FAS a couple million a year," Abernathy says.

And he is not exaggerating. Richard G. Leahy, dean of the Faculty for resources and plannings and overseer of the energy study, says the over-the-summer study may result in halving energy consumption over the next five years. "A year from last June we hope to be consuming energy at 80 per cent of what we consumed then," he says. Abernathy emphasizes that those savings will not result from major renovations and disruptive remodeling work. "It's really not a technology question; it's a people question," he says, adding, "You have to get people to put in smaller lightbulbs and close doors."

Three years ago Bruce Collier, assistant to Dean Rosovsky, thought about the energy problems in William James Hall and came up with a similar plan of action. By turning off steam and electricity at night and on weekends, Collier says he saved 30 to 40 per cent on those bills. Nevertheless, William James still made it into the Big Four because of its ventilation system--one that Leahy hopes to abandon by next spring--which Collier refers to as "an absolute horror story."

The William James system sucks air in from outside, divides it into one hot and one cold stream, and pumps it up to the 14th floor of the building. The mechanism then mixes the air to the desired temperature and distributes it to the rest of the building. This process occurs even if the outside temperature is the same as the desired inside temperature. "I'd almost say you should junk the ventilation, open the windows and use fans," Collier says.

That would be impossible, though, because William James is a "sealed" building that relies on its ventilation system and contains a good number of rooms without windows, Collier notes. So whenever the outside temperature creeps even ten degrees above freezing, the cooling system must be activated. "That means you're turning the energy on from March to November or more," Collier says. And Abernathy notes that insulating the building would prove difficult because the space inside the plasterboard and concrete walls is less than two inches.

Although the Science Center walls contain plenty of space for insulation, the people who use it have just begun to reduce energy consumption a la William James. Like its neighbor, the Science Center sports a ventilation system that wastes energy by cooling all incoming air and then heating it back up to the desired temperature. To alleviate that inefficiency, Leahy says, the energy study group recommended installing timers on the building's thermostats to prevent temperatures from hovering indefinitely at inordinately high settings. Because the timers will run out every hour and a half, someone will have to reset them, Leahy says.

Even though requirements like that will create more work for the Science Center's occupants, the people who are working on the project say they hope renovations and suggestions will not cause undue disruptions.

"We bent over backwards not to make statements like 'close the libraries early'--the objective was to change lifestyle as little as possible," R. Thomas Quinn, assistant professor in the school of architecture at the University of Tennessee and the main investigator during the summer study, says.

Given that objective, the Science Center changes Leahy hopes to initiate during this academic year will be subtle ones. "The only visible thing we may well do is put vestibules at the four entrances to the building," eliminating the need to heat or to cool the doorways, he says. Other possible renovations--insulating the walls or coating the building with thermal paint, for example--"you'll never notice," Leahy adds.

But Ronald E. Vanelli, director of the Science Center, says one possible renovation--converting the many glass walls and ceilings in the Science Center so that they take in and retain less heat--may cause a stir. One suggestion calls for covering the glass surfaces with plywood and painting them black, a process that would cost almost as much as insulating the windows with a second layer of glass. Abernathy doubts that idea will ever come to fruition. "You could blow the building up too, and that would remedy it," he says.

As far as the Bio and Chem Labs are concerned, that suggestion might not be too farfetched. Toning down the ventilation and adding insulation will probably prove the most viable methods of short-term energy savings at the Science Center, but a far more complex process is necessary to combat the main culprit at the labs: fume hoods. In absorbing toxic substances, the hoods consume a tremendous amount of energy and presently must stay on all day and night for safety reasons, Abernathy says. To replace them with more efficient hoods would cost $2500--each. And there are hundreds of them.

Even disregardiang the mammoth cost of replacing the hoods, Bio and Chem labs users dread the thought of changing them. Geoffrey P. Pollitt, director of the Bio Labs, says replacing the hoods would be "very disruptive to operations" and he would rather try using dampers on the present hoods or closing them off at night. But Donald J. Ciappenelli, director of the Chem Lab says that shutting down overnight would prove impossible because graduate students often monitor their experiments 24 hours a day.

To test the benefits of new hoods, Abernathy and company have suggested installing them in only one floor of Conant Hall--one of the Chem Lab buildings--before making any firm decisions. They had the same idea in mind when they suggested last summer's Thayer Hall regulations, Abernathy says. Aside from insulating Thayer's roof, replacing its incandescent lighting with fluorescent lights, and installing smaller showerheads, the renovation teams equipped each room with thermostatic controls, Leahy says. Abernathy says he believes the new heating procedure will eliminate excessively hot or cold rooms; if it proves cost- and energy-efficient, the other Yard dorms may follow suit. But first "you have to get to know where the trouble sports are," he says.

That's not yet possible for the upperclass Houses, though, because energy investigators cannot study small portions of a House without disrupting students' lives, Abernathy says. But he adds that a study of the Houses may take place in summer 1981. Next summer is also the target date for completing work on the Yard dorms, pending the Thayer experiment. "We would do the whole Yard in one fell swoop--I'd say it would take two or three days" to insulate each Yard building, Abernathy says.

Time may not be a problem, but money is another story. Although Leahy says precise estimates have not been determined, he adds that "we could over the next two years spend $2 million." That figure excludes expenditures for fume-hood renovations in the labs or possible House renovations. To finance the project, the Faculty--which has built a $785,000 deficit into its 1980-81 budget--would have to use reserve funds associated with particular buildings and float a loan from the Corporation.

Robert H. Scott, director of financial systems, says the Faculty would borrow the necessary money from the Corporation much as if it were taking a loan from a bank. "It would operate precisely the way a homeowner would," he says, adding that the Corporation would charge normal market rates of interest-- now about 12.5 per cent annually. Administrators express little doubt that the Corporation will approve any suggested projects, despite the Faculty's dubious economic position, because renovations will save money in the long run. "If the Faculty has a proposal that makes good economic sense it will pass," Scott says.

Abernathy contends that the initial suggestions he and his group have proposed should pay for themselves with the savings they generate in the near future. Projects with longer "pay back" periods or higher costs--such as the fume hoods--may have to be shelved for the time being, he adds. More important than the renovations the Faculty commissions for its buildings, though, will be the efforts of their occupants in noticing energy inefficiencies and correcting them. Abernathy points to the short length of time necessary to carry out the energy study as proof that reducing energy consumption is not an unmanageable task. "There are a number of people around who believe conservation is torture," he says, adding. "It doesn't have to be."