During the Christmas break, work will furiously continue on the Brighton Campus on many maintenance and construction activities. (Don’t even get me started about all the roof repairs we have to do if there isn’t any snow for Santa to land on….)
During this break one significant activity taking place is a change in the fuses for our main power lines. This will require a complete shutdown of campus power to make the equipment safe to work on. This will take place on December 27th from 6 am until 8 am. After that time, further testing of our computer controlled distribution system will take place to verify all the changes were good ones. In the highly unlikely event that they weren’t all perfect– or close enough anyway – we will repeat the shutdown on Friday the 28th for the same time frame. This will be highly unlikely, since no radical changes are being made.
Also on December 27th, one of the construction activities will require the power to be off in a large portion of building 10 to upgrade the electrical system in that building. There will be no heat or electricity from 6 am until 4 pm in building 10 on that day.
Finally, a water tie-in will take place on the 27th also. This will interrupt service to building 8 and 9. It will also take all day. There will be no operable drinking fountains, sinks, or restrooms in those buildings.
Given these outages, the friendly folks in ETS and I have some suggestions. First and foremost, please turn off all electrical devices that don’t need to be on while you are gone.
This would be a good time to empty your office refrigerator and let it defrost. The stuff you have in there will be pretty scary when you get back anyway, or if it doesn’t restart correctly everything will be spoiled. Make sure you unplug your coffee makers, toasters, microwaves, hot plates, and any other miscellaneous cooking devices. Those are both a fire safety issue and a waste of energy while you’re gone…..
Turn off all of your electronic devices to protect them from any unexpected surge. This includes computers, printers, routers, copiers, sound systems, and gaming systems, (in residence halls of course…).
Every watt we save makes re-starting the system that much easier and it also helps the environment by allowing us to slow down the cogen plant and send fewer pollutants into the air. There has been a concern that all these green house gasses are affecting the lifting capability of Santa’s reindeer. (You’ve probably seen the recent news stories about Santa needing to lose weight- that’s just a cover story for the real problem.) The study is in an early phase, so it’s too early to say for certain, but I don’t want to take any chances doing things that could reduce wishes being fulfilled…. So let’s conserve while we’re gone, and I’ll try to turn that electricity plant way down so the big guy can bring a full load…
HO HO HO,
Happy and Safe Holidays to everyone..
Questions or concerns can be directed to Blaine Grindle at 292-2804 or bgrindle@monroecc.edu
No Christmas lists please– send those to the North Pole.
Blaine Grindle
Facilities Engineering Services
12/14/2007 |