News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Tennessee Tech will need a $2.3 million chiller now that water chilling capacity has been reached with two new building additions.
Vice President for Facilities and Business Services Chuck Roberts said the future Innovation Residence Hall will require a chiller for air conditioning after capacity is reached. Roberts said this need became apparent during a 2015 utility study.
“We were going to have our peak capability to provide the chilled water out to our HVAC systems,” Roberts said. “We were going to reach capacity with this new Lab Science Building and the Engineering Building that’s going to be constructed next year.”
Roberts said the project will be funded by Tech and paper work has been submitted to the state. However, Roberts said because of Tennessee Tech University being a public university, they still need state approval.
“We’ve already submitted the paperwork up to the state to notify them that we’d like to do this project over the next one to two years,” Roberts said. “They should okay it, because we’re looking to fund it internally. I don’t believe we’re gonna be getting state funding for it.”
Roberts said the plan is to have the Innovation Residence Hall complete in 2023, with the new chiller.
“We’re picking right now, the designers, so once we submit that to the state and they give approval of who we want for the design,” Roberts said. “Then they’ll start giving designs, so we’ll probably see that facility in the 2023 time frame. It will take approximately six months to a year to do the design and then we’ll send it out to bid.”
Roberts said the chiller plan has already been presented to the Tennessee Tech Board of Trustees. He said the chiller is necessary once capacity is reached for sending chilled water to HVAC systems for air conditioning.
