Relaxing climate control

Vicki Humphrey <humphrey.vicki [at] googlemail__com> writes

>Karen Potje <kpotje [at] cca__qc__ca> writes
>
>>   "Indianapolis relaxes climate controls: Leading directors have
>>    been questioning the scientific validity-and cost-of running air
>>    conditioning to the current standard specification" By Javier
>>    Pes From issue 212, April 2010 Published online 8 Apr 10, 2010
>>    (Museums)
>...
>
>For over four decades the environmental guidelines for museums and
>archives have been defined within narrow parameters. While many
>factors influenced what became standards, the narrowest range of
>conditions and the greatest insistence on them, came when energy was
>relatively cheap, global climate considerations were not yet
>mainstream discussions, and the technology of HVAC systems was
>focused more on control than efficiency. Given the looming energy
>crisis, the global economic downturn, and the rising awareness of
>green technology equating to good stewardship of our natural
>resources, responsible and efficient environmental control has
>become essential.

The research my colleagues, Dr. Marion Mecklenburg, Dr. Charles
Tumosa, Dr. David Erhardt, and I  did at the Smithsonian Institution
back in the 1990s on this very topic was understandably
controversial, i.e., we sought to determine the magnitude of
environmental fluctuations that maintain a safe environmental range
for appropriate collection care at a time when a majority of experts
believed that flatlining the museum environment using rigid HVAC
control was fundamentally the optimum answer.  The determination of
safe and therefore allowable environmental fluctuations requires a
materials science approach to evaluate the problem correctly. That
our materials research yielded more forgiving tolerances than many
conservators felt intuitively comfortable with, and for us to
further suggest that significant energy and cost savings do indeed
accrue as a result of relaxing rigid HVAC tolerances led to harsh
criticism of our work.  I hope that this time around the discourse
will be more civil and that conservators with an open mind and
interest in this topic will take heart.  Purposefully
adjusting/relaxing indoor environmental controls to produce energy
savings and the optimum care of collections are not mutually
exclusive goals.

Mark H. McCormick-Goodhart
Director, Aardenburg Imaging and Archives


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:1
                  Distributed: Thursday, May 20, 2010
                        Message Id: cdl-24-1-004
                                  ***