WSU tunnels always moving full steam ahead

Heat never sleeps, at least not at Washington State University.

Come canceled classes, summer vacation, and yes, even the holidays, the Grimes Way Steam Plant – and its tunnels – are in operation 24 hours every day of the year, no matter how few students are on campus.

“In 34 years, I’ve worked all but four Christmases,” Brad Guenther said.

Guenther and his partner are one of eight duos tasked with manning the steam plant, which provides steam heat to the majority of WSU, except a handful of buildings that have their own boilers and are out of reach of the steam tunnel network.

“Chances are, if you took a shower on campus our steam heated the water that you used,” he said. “If you’re in a building on campus, our steam heated that building. We heat pools too, but I imagine some people that swim in the pool don’t think it’s heated.”

Guenther said as of about 10 years ago crews would walk the miles of steam tunnels to check for burnt out light bulbs, leaks or missing or blocked manhole covers.

“They would always find something,” Guenther said. “But at one point they determined the time spent wasn’t worth it.”

The plumbing and electrical crews would also find things not related to the job: students, empty alcohol bottles and condoms.

“It doesn’t sound like a place for a great date to me,” Guenther said.

Like students, wildlife make their presence known in the underground tunnels too.

“We’ve heard of alligators, skunks and raccoons,” Guenther said.

Guenther said seven to eight years ago a 2-foot-long rattlesnake slithered its way into the warm chain of steam tunnels under WSU.

“Instead of killing it with a shovel they had to notify Fish and Game,” Guenther said, noting wildlife officers caught and removed the snake from the underground tunnels.

He said the thought is the snake was displaced with the construction of Pullman’s skate park and accidentally wound up in the tunnel system.

Magpies and pigeons have also been known to become trapped in the steam tunnels.

Duane Rossi, Guenther’s partner engineer, said students used the steam tunnels a few years back to access the College Avenue Steam Plant – WSU’s first steam plant – which was commissioned in 1937.

“The whole upstairs floor was covered in fire extinguisher dust,” Rossi said. “Thanks guys.”

Guenther said some of the older tunnels – built in the 1920s – are tighter and feature countless obstructing pipes and run beneath many of the university’s sidewalks and streets. He said it’s those steam tunnels that give WSU its well-known heated sidewalks and, in some cases, streets.

“It’s kind of a happy coincidence the tunnels are under the sidewalks,” Guenther said. “If they have to get into them they tear out the sidewalks rather than tear out the street.”

As the campus grows and buildings continue to sprout up, the tunnel network gets larger.

“There were 9 miles of tunnels like 15 years ago,” Guenther said. “I would guess now there are 12 or 14 miles.”

Guenther, who learned about steam and power working on ships in the Navy, said both steam plants on campus combine to supply about 400,000 pounds of steam per hour at capacity. He said the most he’s known the campus to use was 260,000 pounds per hour a few years ago.

During slow times – like Christmas break – demand drops to about 160,000 pounds of steam per hour, he said.

“It really depends on the weather,” he said, noting the colder it gets the more heat is needed.

Guenther and Rossi said someone will always need to man the steam plant and monitor the heat pushed to the university in case of a power outage.

Guenther said it used to be up to engineers and other facilities operations staff to manually select which buildings to provide heat and electricity to during a power outage, but that has since changed. Now, everything is done by computer.

He said WSU has three large generators that will provide electricity to much of the university in the event Avista goes offline.

During slow times, Guenther said there are still things that need to be done around the steam plant. He said during the semester some tasks, like planned power outages, maintenance and CPR trainings, are impossible to complete.

“This is the time we do maintenance that we couldn’t do,” he said. “If the dorm was full of people doing finals (a power outage) wouldn’t go over too well.”

Guenther said the computers are changing the job significantly and reducing manual labor, but the job offers something new every day, and that is what he likes most.

“The work is good but it’s quickly going away,” he said. “It’s never the same, there’s always something new or different.”