Wings Over the Rockies is an Air and Space Museum housed in Hangar 1 of the old Lowry Air Force Base facility. The hangar was built in the late 1930's and served as a maintenance and training facility during WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Flights out of Lowry stopped in the 1960's due to encroachment of nearby development around the base. Lowry finally closed its doors and was deactivated in April of 1994. It was then transformed into its present mission as an Air and Space Museum.
In its original incarnation as a military facility, the hangar had different priorities than it has at present. On the one hand, if the military personnel got a little chilly on cold days and a little hot in the summer, tant pis, that came with being in the service. Furthermore, the hangar's expenses were part of a military budget, and the concept of economic viability had no meaning. When the facility became Wings Over the Rockies, all that changed.
Getting the hangar as a donation, while a benefit to be sure, was not necessarily without problems. For one thing, the hangar's roof was in dire need of repair and leaked, damaging insulation and drop ceiling tiles. The damage was extensive enough that the drop ceiling was removed. Simultaneously the roof was repaired.
After the removal of the drop ceiling, the entire internal volume of the hangar was exposed in its original form as a single space - about 6.2 million cubic feet (the hangar is 90 feet high at its apex). Since the museum now has paying customers, their comfort became a consideration that it never much was when the occupants were draftees. And since there was no government funding, paying for the heating of the hangar became a major concern. It soon became evident that the 60+ year-old building was not amenable to retaining warmth on cold winter days.
The hangar's huge space was losing heat in numerous ways - the 30-foot high hangar doors did not seal well, leaving cumulative gaps of several square feet wide open to air drafts. See figure below - it shows a 1/4 inch gap between the doors and a fist-sized gap at the bottom. There are a dozen such doors:
Door Jam Gap
The windows in the hangar doors, over 1000 square feet, are 1938-vintage single pane windows, with an R-value of about 1 (typical double-glazed windows in houses have an R-value of 5-6).
Hangar Door Galzing - Interior View
Finally, the upper vertical portions of the north and south walls were simple corrugated steel, with no insulation and numerous rust holes - a major source of heat loss. Comfort for patrons and staff is provided via forced hot air heating of the entire interior air space. And since hot air rises and the people are all within 6 feet of the floor....
That's the challenge. GeoStar Solar is presently working with the management of Wings to develop a cost-effective strategy to address the heat loss issues in the hangar. As proposals are implemented, this page will be updated to reflect progress.
This page was last modified on Thursday, April 26, 2007