MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — We’ve seen a little bit of everything this month, snow, rain and record high temperatures. Minnesota has seen temperatures from 8 to 80 degrees this March. So, if you live or work in a big building, good luck getting comfortable.
When it gets hot outside why is it so hard to keep it cool inside? Good Question.
It may be spring break for the students at St. Thomas, but anyone sticking around campus this year, is getting a taste of the tropics.
“When I’m trying to do my work and I’m just like sweating like crazy,” one student told us.
“Outside is too distracting and the inside is too hot. It’s a lose-lose,” another student said.
Jerry Anderley is the Associate Vice President of Facilities at St. Thomas. He’s in charge of heating and cooling 52 buildings and more than 3 million square feet of space.
“We have buildings that go all the way from just opened to 1885. It’s a big job,” Anderley said.
Anderley started the process just this week, filling up the school’s 13 water chillers and flipping 80 valves off and on across campus. It’s the earliest it’s been done in the school’s history.
The process takes anywhere from 5 to 10 days to get all of the buildings up and running. Like many commercial buildings, you can’t run heating and cooling at the same time.
“You have to pick one,” Anderley said.
It’s a similar drill WCCO’s Building Supervisor Nate Molenda goes through.
“It usually takes me a week to get it all regulated and all the bubbles worked out of the system before it’s purring like a kitten,” Molenda said. “Of course, this time of year it could be 30 tomorrow and we have to shut the whole system down and drain it and start all over again.”
People like Molenda and Anderley know by now they can’t please everyone and dealing with personal body temperature is another ballgame.
“Yeah, that’s basically the message just be patient, there’s not a whole lot you can do with the equipment,” Anderley said.
So, it will take another couple of weeks to get comfortable.
