HVAC Maintenance and the Survival of Art

Thursday, January 15th, 2009 | HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, Sick Building Syndrome

It’s a strange title for a blog post, we know. So here’s what we’re getting at: Everybody knows that effective HVAC systems are essential to maintaining comfortable, let alone endurable, living and working environments, especially in this era of increasing climate disturbance. But too often we fail to consider the other benefits that modern heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems bring us.

A recent incident at the Georgia Museum of Art, located on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens, illustrates one of these benefits: cultural preservation. As reported by the university’s student newspaper, The Red and Black, about 25 paintings from the museum’s permanent collection “appear to have been compromised to varying extents by moisture created when an HVAC valve failed in a storage room.” The story continues:

The problem was discovered Sunday morning, Jan. 4, about 10 a.m. when a security supervisor making a routine check noticed elevated humidity in one of the museum’s storage rooms. The valve failure caused humid air to blow into the storage area which is used to house paintings, framed works on paper, folk art, Asian objects and objects of decorative art.

The museum staff immediately moved the artworks and began to assess the damage. Employees from the university’s Physical Plant and Office of University Architects repaired the valve. The full extent of the damage may take awhile to manifest itself:

Due to the reactions moisture produces in paintings, a full conservation report cannot be made until the damaged objects return to their original level of moisture. Moisture and water cause the support on which paint is applied, for instance canvas or wood, to expand, often at a different rate from the paint itself, while dehydration has the opposite effect. Therefore, some damage to the paintings may be revealed during the slow drying process.

So we can rack this up as yet another reason to be thankful for modern HVAC systems. We can also view it as a testament to the importance of regular, careful, thorough maintenance (as if you needed to be reminded of this).

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Written by: Goodway Blogging Team

Tags: cultural preservation, Georgia Museam of Art, HVAC systems, HVAC valve, University of Georgia