New windows for KGH’s oldest building

You may have noticed a giant truck parked next to the Watkins wing at Kingston General Hospital these days and it contains over 80 new windows that are being installed on the north side of our historic Watkins building.

The work is part of the Energy Retrofit Project we are carrying out with our partner Honeywell. The work is scheduled to last until mid-December and the entrance to the Watkins wing will be closed during much of it. Staff who use the Watkins entrance can use the nearby Angada wing entrance instead. The inter-hospital shuttle will also be stopping in front of the Angada wing during the renovations.

"These kinds of projects ultimately allow us to take operational dollars and put them into patient care," says Allan McLuskie, Director of Facilities Management. "It also continues to show KGH is a leader in green sustainability initiatives."

The window work is part of the second phase of our overall energy saving project. KGH has been working with the City of Kingston’s Heritage Committee to make sure the look of the wing remained intact. This phase also included upgrades to the air handling systems in the Burr wing. Next up in this phase is the rollout of a computer sleep mode across the hospital. The details of that project will be shared soon. Overall, phase two is slated to save KGH about $177,000 per year.

This is in addition to about $665,000 KGH is saving each year thanks to phase one of the project. In that phase, KGH installed new windows on the south side of the Watkins building, low-flow toilets and water fixtures, over 10,000 new lower-wattage light bulbs, weather sealing and new high efficiency boilers, to name some of the upgrades.