Multiple chilled water outages across Tech’s campus in late July left several on-campus cooling systems, including air conditioning, unable to operate. This resulted in delayed move-in appointments for many first-year students, limited access to spaces on campus and facilities’ staff working overtime to resolve the issue.
According to the Tech News Center, teams from the Emergency Management, as well as Infrastructure and Sustainability organizations responded to the service disruption by initiating a partial shutdown of the cooling system on July 26 to allow for repairs. This shutdown affected more than 40 buildings on campus, stretching from the Centennial Research Building to the Swann Building.
“Without air conditioning, the buildings got up to about 95 degrees and were very humid. It was quite uncomfortable, and the books were deteriorating in the humid conditions. We were worried about our technology, but luckily, we were able to get mobile chillers in the buildings to keep server racks from overheating,” Jason Wright, the communications manager at the Tech Library. said.
Chilled water is needed to cool a room by circulating through coils in air handling units, which absorb heat from the air. The cooled air is then blown back into the room, lowering the temperature. The warmed water returns to the chiller to be cooled again, repeating the cycle.
The exact cause of the outage remains unknown.
Building managers, faculty and researchers collaborated and deployed over 50 coolers throughout campus to help those affected by the outage.
“From the Library’s perspective, everyone at Georgia Tech did a phenomenal job bringing our buildings back for public use,” Wright said. “It was a fantastic partnership that emphasized public safety while ensuring a speedy recovery. We really were impressed daily at the communication and responsiveness of the various units working together to bring everything back online.”
Riley Parker, a first-year CS student, was involved in iGniTe and First-Year Semester Abroad (FYSA) and dealt with many of the issues during her last week of the summer session, as iGniTe did not end until August 2, a week after the cooling system shut down.
“The classrooms we were in for GT 1000 were incredibly hot, so much so that my computer overheated and shut off in class, which was very concerning, to say the least,” Parker said. “I was sick during a portion of the chilled water crisis, and a large portion of the clinic was closed, and because of this I was unable to book an appointment with the doctor and waited until I could go home.”
Parker said over the summer, she received frequent emails from the physics department about class relocations, but despite this, she feels that Tech could have communicated more clearly.
“I think [ Tech] did a poor job at communicating to us what facilities were closed, and how the chilled water outage would affect people living on campus,” Parker said. “Most of the food shops and the clinics, for example, were usually only found to be closed when someone walked in and had to figure it out for themselves.”
Zoe Reed, a first-year PSYC student, agrees with Parker’s sentiment.
“The outage limited the spaces, making it a very difficult [last] week of iGniTe ,” Reed said. “Most buildings I frequently used were closed or had no AC, which was very uncomfortable.” She added, “I was confined, and it was very frustrating during finals week. The library had no AC which limited my study spaces. My final exam room lost AC and was extremely uncomfortable.”
When discussing final exams, Reed said this was a unique challenge that she did not expect to be so impacted by the cooling system closure.
“It was very frustrating having to take my first college exam through the conditions and closures,” Reed said. “I was already stressed and now had to deal with the uncomfortable environment. Of course, it’s manageable, but still very surprising.”
With the maintenance and facilities teams resolving the cooling system issues shortly before students moved in for the fall term, several appointments experienced delays due to HVAC issues. As mentioned in an email to all first-year students, “We do have some rooms with HVAC issues that we are working on.”
According to Tech Facilities, all buildings’ air conditioning systems are back up and running.