Heating

• Dress in layers you can add and take off for comfort throughout the day; Keep a sweater or fleece in your office or work area.
• Avoid the use of space heaters: Using electricity for room heating will negate the desired energy conservation and financial outcome.
• If your room seems hot, consider opening the door to a corridor, rather than a window to the outside.

• Most buildings are set for balanced heating; opening the door to a corridor may be necessary to allow warmer air into a cool room.
• Do not prop open doors to the outside.
• If you do open a vent or window, take time to close it before you leave the office at night, on weekends and breaks. Post a reminder to avoid forgetting to check your window.

• Some rooms have baseboard or radiator style heating units, with accessible hand-dials for adjustment.

If it's too Hot or too Cold

• Temperatures in most rooms will vary around the set point through an average day. If conditions in your area feel unusually hot or cold, WWU Energy Management technical staff will check into the problem to determine whether adjustments are needed.

• Call the FM Work Control Center, x3420 to report unusual or uncomfortable hot or cold conditions in your office or area.

• A building control technician will check your area settings and controls, and make any possible remote adjustments.
• If remote adjustment is not possible, or does not remediate the problem, an on-site visit will be scheduled.
• On-site assessment can be expected within a few days.
• If the site check does not reveal a malfunction, the maintenance technician will request that the 10x12 Program Manager schedule a visit for further review of conditions and needs in the area.

At Western, heating is provided by a central steam plant fired by natural gas, and piped to most buildings on campus. However, heat delivery and temperature monitoring systems vary within each building, depending on age, academic function, engineering and architecture. The architectural differences in our buildings can be charming, but also challenging. Newer buildings, including the LEED construction on campus in the last few years, have been engineered with internal heating and air circulation controls that can be monitored and adjusted remotely. As part of WWU Facilities Management's support of the university Climate Action Plan, retrofitting is scheduled in a number of older campus buildings also. This will enable FM staff to check and adjust settings in most buildings immediately, and schedule necessary on-site visits in a timely manner.

Adjustment of building heat set points to 68F and lengthening late-night setback time will be completed by November, 2011. The expected benefits include a reduction natural gas and electricity costs of $42,000 annually.

Re-calibrating the campus-wide heating set point to 68F is an adjustment of 2 degrees in most campus buildings. Most building occupants are unlikely to notice the change. In order to optimize energy cost savings and CO2 reduction, Faculty, staff and students throughout the university are asked to support the winter set-point. Common-sense actions and awareness of energy conservation will enable Western to reach its next climate action goal (36% drop in emissions by 2020), on the way to climate neutrality by 2050.