Frankie Goes to Reston: RELAC Cooling Tower Proposal Before DRB Includes Actual Cooling Technology

Everyone's favorite jet-age cooling system, which uses the crystalline waters of Lake Anne to provide cold cool air to more than 2,000 Reston customers, is planning to upgrade its technology for the 21st 20th century. For the first time, the system would use "cooling towers" and "evaporators" to cool air "to allow the system to operate more efficiently and when the lake level is too low for the intake pumps," RELAC states in an application to the Design Review Board. But that never happens!

We've let our HVAC certification from one of the Azores' finest correspondence schools lapse, but it sounds like someone's discovered this new-fangled technology called "air conditioning." Let's just hope it's not some crazy fad.

The DRB will review the proposal during a meeting next Tuesday. At issue is a sound wall that would be installed around the cooling tower units that will peek over the existing retaining wall at the RELAC facility near a corner of Lake Anne. The wall is expected to keep the noise from the cooling towers well below the county noise ordinance limits of 60 decibels. Check it:

We've got to think this proposed upgrade will make many folks who live along Lake Anne happy. Now if we can just get the local cable co-op to start carrying that "color teevee" we keep hearing about!