by Carol Donnell, undercover contributing writer | April 1, 2022
The soon-to-be-finished Innovation Center will be a truly magnificent building, filled with classrooms, labs, and open collaborative spaces. In good news for those accustomed to the broiling conditions of the current 100 building, almost the entire Center will have air conditioning.
Unfortunately, one room in the new building will not have access to air conditioning. According to Susan Sear of Willman HVAC, the subcontractor responsible for the heating and cooling systems, Room 305 will be unable to support any of the cooling ductwork or transpositional filaments that are a necessary prerequisite for effective air conditioning.
“The problem is in the constraints driven by other design and engineering considerations,” she said. “Normally, we’d always have all of the rooms on the same air-con system, but this building included a challenge we just weren’t able to overcome. So, Room 305 will not have cooling.”
When pressed on the nature of the “design and engineering considerations” that prevent a classroom from having air conditioning, Sear was evasive.
“I can’t go into details,” she said, “because I’ve been told that it’s a personnel issue and might hurt the feelings of Mr. Chihiro Ikezi, who teaches, I think, chemistry.”
Sear would say no more, but a chance encounter with Mr. A.J. Torrid, a subcontractor for the subcontractor, was helpful.
“Nobody tells me anything,” he began, “but I heard that one of the classrooms had to be reinforced in the flooring, and that meant the floor couldn’t support the usual ductwork necessary for my filaments—both the coaxial and the Mesmer ones—to run counter-clockwise through the subfloor, as is necessary for standard cooling systems.”
Follow-up questions revealed more information.
“Apparently,” he added, “the architects and engineers expected an especially dense and heavy mass to be operating in this one particular room. Something on the order of 500 kg per cubic centimeter.”
When the reporter doubted that any single object that might be contained in the room was that dense, Torrid agreed.
“I wanted to hydrostatically measure whatever was that dense, but I was told not to bother. I was told that it was a personal issue, and that it might hurt the feelings of Mr. Chihiro Ikezi, who teaches, I think, biology.
“But then I came up with a work-around—that I’d feed the Klizner lines and the air ducts through a Jefferies Tube that would go up, over, and around the doorframe. Unfortunately, the doorway for that one particular room was connected to the general problem. We had to widen the top portion of the doorway and reinforce the doorjamb, all to admit the entrance and egress of an unusually large head. That meant no Klizner lines and no air ducts. And without those, no air conditioning.”
Past reporting by The Lancer has already established that Ikezi’s head is outrageously large, so we felt no need to expand upon this topic.
Mr. Ikezi has not yet been informed that his room will not be air-conditioned. He is likely to be understanding.
