Any day you get to tag along with Richard Stearman, Construction Services Manager for FE&P, is a fun day but today I got to tag along with him for the Arch 316/516 HVAC Photo Scavenger Hunt! This is an exercise in which teams of architecture students are sent out to take pictures of themselves with various pieces of HVAC equipment in campus buildings. It sounds simple but it isn’t, hence Richard is there to take them through:

What are they looking for? Well, air grilles, registers and diffusers, HVAC controls (switches and thermostats), air handlers and fan coils, boilers, various pumps and pipes for chilled water, hot water and steam, access panels, ducts, vibration control devices and etcetera. The trick is knowing where to look. I was nearly beside myself.

I saw the guts of the south power plant for the first time. It’s lovely, all shiny and clean, but the same basic things are going on as in the old plant. You can’t run one of these places without a bridge crane:

There are some beautiful views of the new parking garage from the roof:

But the biggest surprise was what appears to be some sort of time travel portal:

This was not on the scavenger hunt list, by the way.

Bonus: We have lift off! (Thanks to an alert early bird reader.)