{"id":871,"date":"2018-04-18T16:06:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T16:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/capitalconstructionprojects\/?p=871"},"modified":"2018-04-27T17:38:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T17:38:34","slug":"steaming-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/2018\/04\/18\/steaming-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Steaming Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Steam
(photo: Erin Martin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Boston’s “Big Dig” project was a\u00a025-year\u00a0megaproject, OSU’s current “big dig,” a steam tunnel installation, will finish by the fall of 2018. The steam tunnel installation is a large-scale infrastructure project designed to improve the reliability and resiliency of heating and steam usage across the Corvallis campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of the Corvallis campus’s steam and half of its electricity is produced by the Energy Center, a co-generation facility located on Southwest 35th St. and Southwest Jefferson Way.\u00a0Steam is used across campus for heating\u00a0buildings, but also for heating water, for sterilizing lab equipment, and even in restaurant steam tables used to keep food hot. When the Energy Center started operating at capacity in June of 2011, it was awarded LEED Platinum certification, which recognizes the Energy Center’s efficient use of energy resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Energy Center\u00a0currently\u00a0feeds steam to campus by\u00a0a\u00a0single\u00a0large steam pipe. In late 2016 and early 2017, the steam line began failing, which\u00a0created an opportunity to improve the steam delivery system for OSU’s Corvallis campus.\u00a0The new system\u00a0features\u00a0two steam feeder lines, in addition to the steam return line. When complete, in normal Oregon weather conditions, one steam line will deliver steam to campus. In the event of extreme cold, or a line failure, a simple valve can be turned and the other line will be put into operation immediately \u2013\u00a0resulting in\u00a0no interruption\u00a0of steam supply\u00a0to campus. This redundancy\u00a0will also help facilities services<\/a> address maintenance during the university’s annual steam\u00a0<\/span>shutdown.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“The benefit of the tunnel is that we can run steam, electricity, and even water to campus as a closed system,” explains Joseph Majeski, director of facilities services. “No catastrophes. If there is a problem we can\u00a0reach it, assess the problem, and fix it. No digging required.” \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The steam tunnel project will cost approximately $10 million and will be\u00a0paid from capital renewal funds.\u00a0In fact, the steam tunnel project will allow\u00a0other issues to be addressed, like road conditions on Jefferson Way, lighting, pedestrian and bike facility improvements.<\/span><\/p>\n

With a\u00a0campus\u00a0as large as the Corvallis campus’s 570 acres,\u00a0Majeski said facilities services staff try to create redundant systems as much as possible to allow for uninterrupted campus operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Keeping classes going,\u00a0laboratories functioning and\u00a0campus running. That’s the goal,”\u00a0says Majeski.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Boston’s “Big Dig” project was a\u00a025-year\u00a0megaproject, OSU’s current “big dig,” a steam tunnel installation, will finish by the fall of 2018. The steam tunnel installation is a large-scale infrastructure project designed to improve the reliability and resiliency of heating and steam usage across the Corvallis campus. All of the Corvallis campus’s steam and half […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","missing-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p517Ns-e3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/belowtheradar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}