HEATING AND LIGHTING THE COLLEGE BUILDINGS

An idea of the problem before the College, and particularly before the Superintendent of Buildings, is evident on consideration of a few facts regarding heating and lighting. At the present time, the heating plant is warming forty buildings, including shoos. To do this adequately, nearly five thousand tons of coal have to be hauled up the hill from the railroad each year. The building now contains eight boilers, all that it will comfortably hold. A chance for expansion, however, has recently been arranged by installing a system of induced draft which rives room for increase at least equivalent to installing two additional boilers.

The electricity for lighting the collage buildings is also generated in this building by three one hundred horsepower engines, directly connected to three 75-kilowatt dynamos. In lighting the college buildings by its own plant, the College saves on a conservative estimate, $5,000 a year over what the cost would be if electricity were purchased from an outside company. The cost for coal and labor of heating and lighting the buildings is approximately $30,000 annually.

A glance at the weather report from the observatory, will show one reason for the large expenditure for coal. In the last volume of THE ALUMNI MAGAZINE, Professor Poor has given an exhaustive report of Hanover weather since the records have been kept. This synoposis shows that the Hanover winters are not getting any milder. The present winter will not cause him to modify this statement. Only twice since 1834 has there been a lower mean temperature than this January—in 1857 and 1888. The minimum of last January, -30, has been lowered only five times in the last seventy-seven years. Sixteen days of last January and nine of the first fourteen days of February, showed a minimum temperature below zero.