The Central Heating and Cooling Plant, or CHCP for short, is absolutely critical to keep campus operations running smoothly every day. The CHCP produces all chilled water, hot water, and steam needed for heating and cooling most of the large buildings in core campus. The team that works tirelessly to keep the CHCP online is integral to the lives of the entire campus community. The team has over 100 years of experience between them, and is composed of 6 maintenance technicians and 10 operators, as well as Randy Housewright, Maintenance Supervisor and Joe Yonkoski, Superintendent. We sat down with Randy and Joe to learn more about the team at the CHCP and the important work that they do.

Randy has 18 years of experience at UC Davis as well as 30+ years in the piping trades and originally started his work in this field through a pipefitter union apprenticeship in 1987. Randy’s team works on preventative maintenance, cleaning out vaults, rerouting pipes, and fixing leaks like steam leaks. Joe has been superintendent since May 2024, and got his start as a chemical engineer who worked on reducing emissions before joining Utilities as an engineer in 2017. His main role now is to keep things functioning smoothly, and his team handles any significant operational issues and focuses on keeping the campus demand for heating and cooling satisfied. 

The CHCP team is also playing a major role in the Big Shift project that is revolutionizing energy use on campus! They work closely with Design and Construction Management and the project team implementing the Big Shift to design new routing for piping, provide input on design considerations for new Central Plant infrastructure, and verify that valves have closed before digging starts. The project will add new chillers and heat pumps, as well as a new hot water tank at the TES (Thermal Energy Storage) plant. These changes and improvements will make a huge impact on our campus’ fossil fuel usage, making us more sustainable and energy efficient overall.

With so many important tasks and projects to balance, the team makes sure to always prioritize the critical tasks first and try to be prepared for any situation. The CHCP team also makes sure to keep equipment operational so that they are able to meet campus demands, especially during peak seasons with extreme weather like summer and winter. The operations team is staffed 24/7 and works around the clock to monitor the plant, so the operators are great at working independently to keep the systems operating smoothly. Even when the maintenance team isn’t on site, there’s always a team on-call to handle an emergency at any hour.

Randy and Joe’s favorite part of the job is the unique pressure that comes with dealing with emergencies or challenges at the plant. Because of how important the CHCP is to our campus, any emergencies that occur are time-sensitive and the team has to find ways to deal with them as quickly and efficiently as possible. One example is when the new Primate Central Heating and Cooling Plant lost power from a bird striking a power line, and since the entire system was automated it was incredibly complicated to get back online. It was winter time and the Boilers providing heat to the Primate campus were offline because of the power outage. The team worked together for several hours and was able to successfully get the Boilers back on and provide heat to the Primate Center. In another incident, a huge rainstorm damaged the plant’s steam vaults and blew a 2 inch plug out of a steam pipeline. When cold rainwater comes in contact with hot steam pipes, the steam inside the pipes condense and it creates a water-hammer effect. It wasn’t an easy fix, but the team was able to work hard even in the rain to repair the vaults and get the pipes up and running again. 

To stay up to date with new advancements in the field, the team members are constantly researching the best way to do their work. Most of the team have an extensive background in plumbing or pipefitting so they’re already familiar with industry standards, and they’re still always learning and expanding their knowledge. Joe and Randy check in on them to make sure they’re up to date on training and on the right track. For Boiler inspections, which are required annually, they have an outside inspector that comes to the plant to inspect the equipment before they go online. It takes a lot of teamwork to keep the CHCP operating at high efficiency every single day, but they are always willing to put in the effort to keep our campus the best it can be. Thank you so much to the CHCP team for all that you do!