Tuesday, December 08, 2009

How H1N1 leads to frostbite

Well, in kind of a roundabout way.

I work in the new wing of our building, opened in 2002. The stupid heating/cooling system is of course, state of the art, and can't be adjusted by any of the mere mortals who work in our building. Apparently, to make any changes, someone must bring a special computer in to hook up to the system and feed data back to Vancouver where adjustments can be made.

Or something like that.

Doesn't matter anyway, since a flaw in the design makes correcting the problem impossible.

You see, our theatre and the band room share a common heating/cooling thermostat somehow. That means that on days like yesterday and today, we have a problem. We've had an H1N1 vaccination clinic in our gym the past couple of days.

That means no P.E. classes in there. That means that the grade 9 and 10 band kids are all in our band room at the same time. All 145 of them.

That makes the temperature rise pretty quickly. That makes the cooling system blow air from outside into the band room. Unfortunately that means that the sub-freezing air is also blowing into my theatre. Thing is, it's already not that warm in there.

We bundle up in our jackets and try to get out of the line of the air vents. I turn on 30,000 watts of stage lighting to try to bring up the room temp. one degree or so. Today I brought a little space heater from home and kept it running for the morning.

*sigh* Reminds me of my very first high school job in Prince Rupert. We had climate control there too, and the windows were bolted shut to prevent folks like me from disturbing the finely-tuned system that meant one fan blew car exhaust into my room any time anyone idled by the "no parking" sign.

I had to threaten to throw a chair through a window before the principal came down with a screwdriver to help me sabotage that system. I wonder if taping over our fans would cause some sort of system failure now?

(After yesterday's incident where a band student plugging in some amps caused a power failure that darkened the school and some of the surrounding neighborhood, I'm reluctant to find out.)

Hope you're all keeping warm where you are. Clear and cold here, and about -6 (21 degrees F) right now.

We're just waiting by the phone at them moment, looks like my father in law is getting near the end and we're hoping a bed in hospice is available tomorrow.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It was around 28 degrees today with a stiff wind. I work in an old, drafty building with a large window.

Thanks to a combination of heating/cooling devices and varied temperature tolerances, the air conditioning was running in my wing today. Blowing cold air directly onto me. In addition to the cold air from the window. Too bad I don't have any sick days.