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Mar. 10th, 2008 09:36 pmSo we have a new building. Or rather we have a new extension, which is what they call it when they build an entirely new building in a position that just happens to be geometrically adjoint to the position of your current building. This makes it somewhat convenient, because you can hall over your stuff to your new office. It is somewhat inconvenient because during the twelve months of construction, they are jackhammering away just down the hallway.
So now it's complete, and already we hate it. Mostly because of the air conditioning.
If you've ever been in a building with air conditioning, you know the background rumble that it produces, which can range from a soothing sub-bass rumble to sounding like a gale outside the building.
The designers were not nearly that nice to us. It's not tolerably loud, like Grand Central station, or standing at the end of the runway at O'Hare International. It's really loud. It's the kind of sound that the arrogant guy who has spent the past two minutes on his cell phone ignoring reality hears at the moment when the back half of his stopped hummer is removed by the Amtrack Los Angeles-San Diego line at fifty miles per hour. Some of the rooms will require ear protection. Not to mention that the pressure of the air above our ceiling is so great that the foam tablets that make up the ceiling lift up and wave in the breeze.
And, perhaps most unfortunately, the rooms where I am in are in a small corridor at one end of the building, a U-shaped bend sealed off at both ends by a door. I have estimated the reverse pressure on the door due to the difference in air conditioning efficiency at about forty pounds. This is relatively little trouble for me, especially if I brace one foot against the wall, but one of the graduate students with an outside office probably only weighs a hundred pounds when wet. She has to use her whole weight to get the door to move. We're either going to have to leave it open, or leave a gun there so you can shoot out the little window in the door let the pressure equalize, although you might get sucked through the hole by explosive decompression.
Which leads us to wonder where the air is going. Are the designers trying to air the entire building by putting the outtakes only on one floor? Is this building made so that in an emergency we can cut away the pillars and fly off into the sky? Or have our astrophysicist colleagues accidentally made a black hole in the upstairs lab that they haven't told us about.
So now it's complete, and already we hate it. Mostly because of the air conditioning.
If you've ever been in a building with air conditioning, you know the background rumble that it produces, which can range from a soothing sub-bass rumble to sounding like a gale outside the building.
The designers were not nearly that nice to us. It's not tolerably loud, like Grand Central station, or standing at the end of the runway at O'Hare International. It's really loud. It's the kind of sound that the arrogant guy who has spent the past two minutes on his cell phone ignoring reality hears at the moment when the back half of his stopped hummer is removed by the Amtrack Los Angeles-San Diego line at fifty miles per hour. Some of the rooms will require ear protection. Not to mention that the pressure of the air above our ceiling is so great that the foam tablets that make up the ceiling lift up and wave in the breeze.
And, perhaps most unfortunately, the rooms where I am in are in a small corridor at one end of the building, a U-shaped bend sealed off at both ends by a door. I have estimated the reverse pressure on the door due to the difference in air conditioning efficiency at about forty pounds. This is relatively little trouble for me, especially if I brace one foot against the wall, but one of the graduate students with an outside office probably only weighs a hundred pounds when wet. She has to use her whole weight to get the door to move. We're either going to have to leave it open, or leave a gun there so you can shoot out the little window in the door let the pressure equalize, although you might get sucked through the hole by explosive decompression.
Which leads us to wonder where the air is going. Are the designers trying to air the entire building by putting the outtakes only on one floor? Is this building made so that in an emergency we can cut away the pillars and fly off into the sky? Or have our astrophysicist colleagues accidentally made a black hole in the upstairs lab that they haven't told us about.