Local hospital on regulating facility temperature in extreme heat
Posted/updated on: July 23, 2023 at 6:52 pm
TYLER — As East Texas experiences extreme heat, our news partners at KETK spoke with CHRISTUS Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler where it’s critical to monitor its facilities’ temperatures around the clock. KETK asked: It’s easy to manage your AC at home, but what does it take to cool down more than one million square feet?
“Around 45 men that are just constantly are working the main central plant and we do have a dedicated guy out there but, we have to watch it 24 hours a day,” Brad Pike, the Facilities Director for Christus Mother Frances.
The maintenance team is responsible for keeping 1.5 million square feet cool. Pike estimates the buildings use around eight hundred thousand kilowatts each month.
“And if we anticipate a heat wave, you know like we have we just make sure all the equipment is functioning as designed, we have to do a lot of preventative maintenance,” said Pike.
When it comes to cooling your home versus a large facility, not only are the sizes of the units different but the process of cooling is too.
“In commercial buildings, we use large, chilled water systems, versus your house that uses refrigerant and has that little condense unit that’s sitting outside,” said Anthony Martin, Trane Technologies Director of Energy Services for Texas Northern-Louisiana region.
Martin added that typically businesses use “chillers.”
“What they do is they cool water down to about 40 degrees; we then pump that into large air-handling units that are inside of the building. That air-handling unit has really large coils and lots of airflow going through it,” said Martin.
Evolving technology is a huge factor in managing temperatures. “Through our building automation systems our building controls, similar to how somebody would manage their house,” said Martin.
Pike shared that it’s also about being proactive. “This system helps alarm us, and let us know about any problems that arise,” said Pike.
Ensuring the hospital atmosphere is right at all times, for patients, staff, and life-saving equipment.
