ANN ARBOR - A number of buildings on the University of Michigan's North Campus will be chillin' this summer with a unique new district cooling system.

The North Campus Chiller Plant Project consists of a nondescript, 8,500-square-foot building, housing chillers and pumps that will push 48- to 52-degree water through an underground, two-mile looped pipe system.

Within buildings in the district, the chilled water system will either be newly installed or replace existing air conditioning systems and provide energy savings, reduced maintenance, better reliability, and reduced proliferation of cooling towers and associated noise, according to the U of M.

"Instead of all the buildings in the district maintaining an air conditioning system, or building new chillers, they can get rid of all that with this system," said project foreman Scott Rogers of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 190 and Pipe Systems. "All those buildings need is the piping for the chilled water, coils for the water to run through, and air blown over the coils."

Contractor Pipe Systems is handling the underground portion of the project, while Industrial Pipe Systems is in charge of plumbing and pipe work inside the chiller plant. Construction of the pump house itself is being overseen by Walbridge-Aldinger.

Utilizing three 1,300-ton chillers, the $14.3 million plant will provide up to 3,750 tons of chilled water capacity. The University of Michigan said the system will be connected to the Computer Science and Engineering Building, Solid State Electronics Lab addition to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Biomedical Engineering addition to the Advanced Technology Laboratory.

The university said the system will also be provided to the following existing buildings to allow for the replacement of aging chillers that are expected to fail in the near future: Herbert H. Dow Building, GG Brown Building, Industrial and Operations Engineering Building, Engineering Research Buildings, and the School of Information North Building.

In addition, two sets of 18-inch main are valved off and ready for a future Phase II.

When the facility is up and running, chilled water will leave the plant through 30-inch mains and course through the system down through eight-inch ductile iron pipes buried six feet below ground, providing the means to cool buildings. Water is then re-circulated to the plant, and re-cooled.

The project began in September and the system should be completely linked together by the end of February, when the system will be turned over to the University of Michigan.

District heating and cooling is a small but growing trend on college campuses and elsewhere. The International District Energy Association said, "today, with fuel costs near record highs and campus expansion driving load growth, the economics of investing in energy efficient infrastructure are more compelling than ever."

Rogers said the most difficult part of the U-M project is unknowns involving pressure-testing the system - a process which was beginning late last month. The system couldn't be tested until the pipes are buried - and no one relishes the idea of re-digging to find any potential leaks.

"The project has gone very well, we will have zero leakage when we're finished," Rogers said confidently.

FILING A STANCHION support inside the chiller plant in Ann Arbor is Matt Reilly of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 190 and Industrial Pipe Systems. Behind him are three 1,300-ton chillers that are the backbone of the system.

U-M 's new chiller building.