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Students heated over dorm room temperatures post-break

Campus buildings remained heated over the break despite the absence of students.

Facilities Management Director Ronald Doerzaph said they are limited to what can be done about energy efficiency as far as heating and cooling.

“We cannot do anything as far as saving power, but we do send people around to turn down the converters. We use hot water to heat buildings,” he said.

The school monitors the temperature in each building, he said.

“We have installed motion sensors on each floor. They track how cold or hot the temperature gets to keep people from having to open windows,” said Doerzaph.

“When windows are opened anytime of year you lose energy, even in the summer because there is more humidity and it requires more coolant,” he said.

The buildings each have their own heating system that can only control overall and not individual rooms.

“With interim it is almost impossible to do anything. We are open so the heat has to be on.  Even if there are only two people in a building we cannot do anything,” he said. “As far as the dorms, each building is on one heating system.”

Williams Hall, for example, was kept heated because the ROTC and Business Manager’s offices are in the building.

“Our white board, posters, pictures and a bulletin board fell off the walls because of how hot it was in our dorm over break, and I saw other boards had fallen when we came back,” sophomore learning behavior specialist major Katie Cullotta said.

“Over break we had people working in University Hall, and even if [there is] only one person, heat must remain on,” said Doerzaph. “There is no control for each room. Only the entire building can be controlled, and the only way in University Hall is to turn off the fan in each room. This is not recommended because it can create mold.”

Doerzaph said the savings from adjusting individual room temperatures are minute.

“Any time you can drop the temperature of the water the bill goes down, but we can’t turn converters down, only how much air is going into rooms,” he said.

Anyone with rooms that are too hot should let Facilities know. They can be found in MacMillan Hall.

“Let us know when it gets too hot,” Doerzaph said. “We are limited on what we can do, but there  is a way we can adjust the temperature in a room.”

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