POWER HEATING OF NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL REMAINS A VISION

Evening Star, Issue 26137, 26 June 1947, Page 6

POWER HEATING OF NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL REMAINS A VISION

Almost 28,000 gallons of water, bubbling at a temperature of 250 deg, and providing sufficient steam heating to insulate the Otago Medical School against winter’s blasts, was a vision dreamed by those who planned the construction of the new south block of that institution. No cylinder with a capacity sufficient to hold that quantity of water existed in New Zealand, sq one was specially built by a Dunedin engineering firm. An electric boiler of 6,600 volts was ordered from England to heat the waterj and a special building 80ft long, 18ft wide, and almost 16ft high was constructed to house the plant. The cvlinder has just been shifted into position! the vision was becoming a reality, and; the dream was as sweet as ever, until a nightmare provided a rude awakening. The boiler would be a greedy consumer of electric power, and Dunedin is suffering a shortage of hydro-electricity. The electric boiler and 27,274-gallon cylinder offered the ideal solution. A Dunedin engineering firm contracted for the work and made a cylinder 34ft in length with a diameter of 12ft, which is big enough to garage a truck and a motor car. The water is heated to a temperature of 250 deg, and circulated round the various heaters in the building. The electrode boiler, which is expected from England early next year, is also something special. It has no elements, the current passing direetly through the water. The water is doped with salts to bring it to the point of correct, conductivity. Nothing can burn out > in the boiler, and no attendants are required. •* IT MAY BE FOR YEARS.” Not for some years ; perhaps—possibly not until the turbines are turning at Coal Creek—will the ourrent be switched on for the electric boiler at the Medical School. The realisation of this unfortunate position is all the more acute, for not so long ago a promise was given of free electricity for the boiler for a period of five years. The decision to install a separate electric plant was reached only after lengthy consideration by the University authorities. It was originally proposed that feed pipes be led underground across King street from the Public-Hos-pital, but that suggestion was eventually turned down A coal-burning plant had pride of place among the plans that followed, but the dust and smoke nuisance it might create in laboratories housing delicate instruments was the main factor causing the rejection of this scheme. So that tho boiler would not become a load on day-time electricity consumption, it was proposed that it be switched on only hours of midnight and 6a.m. The power then available would bring the water to the 250 deg temperature desired, and sufficient heat would be retained during the day to warm the building. In that way the consumption of electricity would not clash with the industrial demand during normal working hours. Although it appears at present that the boiler may not be in operation for a few years yet, because of the power problem—in any case it will not be fully assembled until early next year—it is the long-term solution to the heating of the National Medical School. One? tho present emergency has been overcome, perhaps not until Coal Creek is a reality, the laboratories, elinics. and class rooms ~of the Medical School will be kept warm bv this apparatus. Until then, however, it must stand idle, n silent monument to the vagaries of Nature and the war-time destruction of materials bv man.