Gallery Renovation
Visitors to museum have been watching a major transformation going on at the John L Wehle Gallery this season.
But what visitors can see from the Great Meadow is just a hint of what is an extensive $2 million renovation that has seen much of the gallery interior gutted and the entrance demolished as new systems, storage and display areas are installed. The result: a modern, re-designed, energy-efficient building.
Serious work began in April on the 35-year-old building that previously had been heated with oil and cooled with electricity.
All that is being replaced with a new geo-thermal system that uses the earth itself to control the environment. Forty-two 140-foot wells were drilled behind the gallery, tapping into the earth’s natural heating and cooling ability. (Below 10 feet, it’s usually a steady 55 degrees.)
During the summer when the building’s ambient temperature exceeds that of the ground,
pumps are used to draw heat from the building into a transfer medium (water and glycol) that is pumped through narrow pipes into the ground where the heat is dissipated in the earth.
In the winter the process is reversed. Heat pumps extract heat from the ground and use it to heat the building. When the outside temperature dips below 40 degrees, a 10-kw heater in each room provides supplementary heating.
In addition, the earth beneath the building becomes a heat sink, assisting in summer cooling. The mass of the storage room walls were increased with grout slurry pumped into open cavities. New structural ceilings with 12 inches of insulation are also being installed.
By using passive measures, improved insulation, enclosed thermal mass and vapor and infiltration retarders, the building will be maintained at 70 degrees or below in the summer and mid-50s in the winter, with between 35 and 55 percent relative humidity.
In all, it will save “a tremendous amount of energy,” says Ed Coons, the gallery renovation project manager.
The museum also chose to go green by replacing all the old 120-watt incandescent bulbs with 7-watt LED lighting.
New storage areas will feature a high-density, mobile storage system with an in-floor rail system that will provide twice the storage area of standard space that size.
New display areas created especially for the Greene Collection of historic clothing will include pull-out drawers and built-in display units
When done—it is expected to reopen in 2012— the gallery will be cost effective, reliable, sustainable and environmentally friendly, and should serve as a model for other similar institutions.
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