FIES building

The summer of 2012 showed excessively long periods of too warm temperature in the FIES room. That summer clearly was the warmest since FIES was placed in its dedicated building. The thermal deviations were long term, and it takes a few days for the building to cool after the outside air has dropped. It seems clear that all the insulation only delays the heat reaching the FIES room and when a period of too hot weather is long enough the room will warm up. Possible solutions to this are raising the temperature at which the FIES room is kept and improve the cooling.

The plan is to increase the FIES room temperature and paint as much as possible the outside of the building and the surrounding area white. Both should be done before the summer. The room temperature has already been increased by 1 degree, but we might consider a further increase.

A long standing issue has been that if the FIES dewar needs to be pumped, a lot of heat is generated in the room itself, affecting the temperature stability. To allow pumping the FIES dewar without heating the FIES room a system was designed where the dewar (through an extended tube) is connected to a pump in the front room. All the required parts have been purchased, but to be able to install the tube connecting the pump with the dewar, a 10cm diameter hole needs to be drilled through 25cm of armed-concrete from the front room to the FIES room. We are looking for a specific period when to do this with minimal impact to observing programs.