Heat Mitigation in the Halls
While in the state of Iowa our primary seasons during the school year are fall, winter, and spring, temperatures can rise during Block 1 and Block 8. Below are our heat mitigation efforts and collected knowledge to help students face the heat.
The humble box fan
Should a box fan run 24/7? It physically can, however fans the risk of burning the motor out sooner, dirtying the blades with no benefit to you, and blowing things around unexpectedly in an empty room. It’s smart to turn off your fan when no one is in the room.
Facing in or out of the window? It depends on where the coolest air is. Pointing inward produced a noticeably cooler room if it is cooler outside. Also, if you sit in the breeze of the fan, you'll benefit from the cooling effect due to both evaporation and the increased heat transfer coefficient due to force air flowing past you. If it is cooler inside, then point it outward to push remaining hot air out and draw cooler air into the room from the hallways. When placing a fan in a window in this way, pull the window down on top of the fan making the fan’s open portal narrower. If you can’t tell the difference between outside and inside, point that fan at yourself to benefit the aforementioned evaporation and force air effects until the temperature changes in one of the two locations.
If you do not yet have a box fan, your New Student Orientation program may operate a shuttle bus to our local Lindale city area where there are department stores like Target and Walmart. You may purchase wanted items there.
Room design
Sunlight can be a big contributing factor to room warmth. If you’re not in your room or don’t need the light, close the blinds/curtains to reflect warmth away. If you have a small fridge with the ability to make ice, add ice to your water and whatever else you drink.
Your student senate and student affairs department are working on expanding ice machine locations. You can also fill your water bottles with ice from the dining hall. Use the ice as ice packs using a towel.
Hot air collects near your ceiling. If you are considering raising your bed or not, consider delaying raising it until cooler temperatures are more common. When you do raise it, recruit several floormates to make it easy to do.
Electronics generate heat. Televisions, laptops, mini fridges, video game consoles, some type of light bulbs all make the room warmer. Consider their use if your room is actively warming.
You can engineer your floor to cool the entire floor faster. Open windows in rooms on both sides of the hallway to offer the natural breeze a route to pass through and take the hot air with it. This works best when rooms directly across the hall from one another cooperate. Encourage open doors and windows, weather permitting, for a natural fan effect.
Public cooling locations
Utilize the public buildings on campus that have air conditioning (AC). The Thomas Commons (6am-Midnight), Cole Library (various hours) and Law Hall (24/7 with student ID) all have air conditioning and are available for student use.
During the height of heat in Iowa, we may temporarily increase late-night student access to non-residence hall air-conditioned buildings to serve as cooling centers. An email will go to students on-campus should this program occur.
New lounge cooling location committee
Residence Life and your Facility Services teams are conducting tests in the halls that are without AC. We aim to identify common areas that can be air conditioned so the community can gather in their own hall. This summer we encountered a number of challenges during our tests such as existing window designs being incompatible, ability of some rooms to retain the AC, and electrical capacity of the rooms. Our tests will continue until we have definitive results. While the total electrical grids of these halls cannot support individual units across the building, we hope to push the system to a safe limit by providing managed cooling spaces.
Being a guest in an AC hall
Visit friends and acquaintances who do live in AC residence halls (Dows, Tarr, Pauley-Rorem, Russell, Smith). Guests may sleep over too as long as all roommates are comfortable with this arrangement. Please be aware of our guest policies such as being present with your guest at all times, knowing if they break policy you may also be responsible, and not lending them your keys or ID.