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The ECM project team and FOD will be executing the outage.  Physics facility team members will be on site to monitor the work.

 

 

 

 

A two day outage to allow the conversion of the existing main drives on the motors of Air Handler 1, Air Handler 2, and their related main exhaust fans from fixed speed systems to variable speed systems and to allow the installation of new flow sensors in the main exhaust plenum on the roof.

 

Normal preventive maintenance on other systems that was deferred from the last quarterly outage will also be done during this outage and will include inlet filter changes in both AHU-1 and AHU-2, cleaning of the heat recovery coils, lubrication of bearings, and various other minor maintenance tasks.

 

 

 

 

Variable speed drives are a significant technology upgrade to the present systems and are a key component in achieving the targeted energy savings that the project seeks.  An outage, with a corresponding building closure, is required because both air handlers and all exhaust fans need to be shut down at the same time.  During this time, there will be crews working inside the ductwork of the main exhaust air plenum on the roof.  The off condition is necessary for the safety of these workers. Preventive Maintenance work that was deferred to this outage was moved to minimize disruptions to the occupants.

 

 

 

 

The outage will take place the weekend of August 8-9-10.

 

Detailed plans for each day are as follows:

 

August 8:  Beginning at ~7:00 pm,  thermostats in labs will be lowered to approximately 65 degrees F to bring the room temperature down in preparation for the off condition that follows on the 9th.  This added cooling will help the room to not overheat when air flow is absent and the presence of heat loads from equipment may remain.

 

August 9:  Beginning at ~5:00 am, work will commence and both AHU-1 and AHU-2 and all Main Exhaust Fans will be shut down.  A partial restart of various systems will occur throughout the remainder of Saturday to provide some nominal cooling and air flow in the building as work progresses.  A detailed matrix of which system is projected to be on at which part of the day is available for interested parties at the link here or by clicking on the image below.  Work on Saturday is projected to stop at ~5:00 pm when all systems will be restarted for overnight.

 

August 10:  Beginning at ~7:00 am, work will commence again and will include any residual work that was not completed on Saturday.  Follow the links in the paragraph above for details of the Sunday work plan.

 

August 5-8:  Leading up to the outage weekend, conversion of the exhaust fans will be done during normal business hours over a period of a few days with a single fan of the six fans in total off at any one time.  This “five out of six fans running” mode is an operating condition that has been present in many previous scenarios and has been proven to create no special restrictions or limitations to building operations.

 

 

 

 

The work will take place in the basement mechanical rooms near the air handlers and on the roof near the main exhaust fans and plenum.  No work will be done during this outage in any labs.

 

 

 

 

Contractor teams from Bruner Corporation and SME and FOD maintenance staff will execute the work.  Crews will be working in parallel to limit the outage duration.  It is expected that a total of 20-30 workers will be present.

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ECM