Getting warmer, warmer, now colder...

Things were reaching fever pitch last week on the fourth floor of the Benjamin Banneker Building, where an experiment was being conducted.

In a cramped, soundproof room, undergraduates sat in temperatures as high as 88 degrees with caps on their heads. Wires trailed off the caps measuring their brain signals.

One participant in the experiment (the details of which could not be divulged) had to take frequent breaks because of a headache brought on by the heat. Finally, the professor running the study halted the experiment.

Clearly, climate control in the Benjamin Building had become an issue.

"It goes through phases of being hot and being really cold," Laboratory Coordinator Kristin Stauffer said. "It's hard for the university to catch up sometimes."

Indeed, as spring heats up, rising temperatures point to another creaking corner of the university infrastructure: the air-conditioning systems, some of which are approaching their fifth decade in service. With such antiquated units, the transition from hot to cold is not a quick one, say mechanics responsible for making it happen.

Facilities Management, the university department responsible for keeping up with renovations, has a project backlog totaling more than $600 million.

When pipes break, there is usually money on hand to replace them, said John Vucci, Associate Director of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Systems.

But for the older units that keep on chugging have to wait. The oldest was installed in Tydings Hall in 1959, Vucci said. His father helped put it in.

Many of the older systems - the Benjamin Building included - have a "dual-temp system," which means heating and air-conditioning has to run through the same pipes.

When the heat is on, the water running through the pipes reaches 140 to 180 degrees. The air-conditioning takes the water temperature down to 45 degrees.

That drastic change required to switch from heat to air conditioning would burst the pipes if it happened to quickly, Vucci said. So HVAC mechanics have to wait three days for the pipes to cool off. "We're in static mode during that time," Vucci said.

Projects to update technology are a constant process. "We nip at it," Vucci said.

Newer systems have four sets of pipes instead of two. Cold and hot water run in separate pipes, and there's no danger of a rupture.

The HVAC systems office doesn't discriminate where they do repairs and renovations, he said. President Mote's office is a room with a dual-temp system and Mote has often had to walk to a different part of the building for a break from the high temperatures, Vucci said.

There may be no human hierarchy in deciding which buildings get updated air-conditioning. But people don't come first, Vucci said. Animals come first, than computers, then people.

"People can get up and go," he explained. "Animals don't have a choice."

Vucci said the struggle is to maintain a stable environment at 75 degrees to produce an "indoor environment more conducive for learning so students aren't falling asleep."

Faculty Research Assistant Jordan Osher, who works in the Benjamin Building, attributed part of the problem to the absence of windows. "It was miserable on Friday," he said. "Everyone was sluggish."

Still, there's no clear-cut deadline for switching to air-conditioning.

University administrators must balance on a tightrope when they decide to embark on the weeklong process of changing the buildings on the campus. Vucci said he would rather be too early than too late, and this year the university is ahead of schedule.

"Our logic is you either have to suffer in the afternoon or put a sweater on in the morning," Vucci said. "I would rather deal with the cold complaints."

The process itself can be laborious to change over the systems.

John Lee, who manages one of the eight teams of mechanics that run the units, said he has 17 buildings in his section of the campus to convert.

The system in the Computer and Space Science Building, for instance, has 42 steps involved in its conversation. In the building's basement, among a labyrinth of pipes that resemble the insides of a submarine, are 38 color-coded levers and wheels that must be adjusted to get the system running.

Lee stood with a clipboard yesterday checking each one off as his team of mechanics got each one.

The technicians agreed their peak period will be next week after the changeover is completed, when they will have to go back and fix the systems that fall victim to another year of aging.

Vucci said he deals with a fair number of complaints during the course of his day. "Air conditioning was once a luxury," he said. "Now it's a requirement. People expect to have certain quality conditions."

taustindbk@gmail.com