With winter’s chill still lingering tenaciously last week, talk of air conditioning would have seemed unthinkable, but temperatures have spiked into the 80s this week, and base facilities officials are preparing to change over from heating to cooling.

It’s a weighty decision, as the process is time-consuming and will not be reversed until October, but Joe Provenzano, deputy director of the Installation and Environment Division, said it will likely begin this week.

“Once we shut the heat down, we don’t turn it back on,” he said.

While buildings constructed after the early 1990s, such as the Davis Center or much of The Basic School’s recent construction, have “four-pipe” climate control systems, with both the boiler and chiller running year-round, most of the buildings on the main side of base use two-pipe systems that can only run one or the other.

Switching between the two takes about a month, Provenzano said.

The process begins with Facilities Maintenance Section workers making the rounds of all the buildings and turning off the boilers, which then must cool for at least a day.

“After we shut them down, we have to basically drain the system and refill the chiller pipes and then turn on the air conditioning,” he said. After the water has been drained and refilled, officials will consider whether the weather is warm enough to turn on the cooling system. Once that’s done, air has to be burped out of the pipes, and then no more action is needed until the change back in the fall.

The process has to be carried out in every older building the base owns. These include most occupied by tenants, with the exceptions of the Department of Defense Education Activity schools, the clinic, the FBI Academy and the Marine Corps Air Facility.

Provenzano said the area’s erratic spring weather makes it difficult to please building occupants with the timing of the change. A heat wave like this week’s will bring about a cry for air conditioning but is almost sure to be followed by at least one more cold spell. “We’ve got to look at the long-term forecast,” he said.

— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com