HHS Receiving New Heating System

HHS will be receiving a new approximately 3.6 million dollar geothermal heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system to replace the original 1955 boiler system from when the high school was built. The project will include installing new pipes throughout the building and building water wells underground next to the tennis courts and in the front lawn next to the auditorium. 

Construction for the project will begin in late February as long as weather conditions permit, and construction is set to wrap up by August 1st.

“As soon as weather permits, I mean, they’ll start doing it. The wellfield, they can obviously do it now. But the wellfield is going to go out (by the auditorium), and I mean, that’s going to take a significant amount of time to do, so I mean as soon as the weather permits, we will start working on that,” HPS Director of Technology and Operations Trent Kelly said.

Replacing the boiler system has been in the works for around seven years and was first brought up because of concerns about how much longer the current boiler system will last.  

“So I’m gonna say we’ve been talking about it probably for, you know, five to seven years, and then it’s just like, listen this system is not going to last, you know, and, I mean, if the system goes down, we’re not having school for a significant amount of time,” Kelly said. “So, I mean, it’s been kind of on the horizon. We just didn’t know how we would pay for it. And then some of this other money came through.”

The project will end up only costing the district 400,000 to 500,000 dollars that will come out of the district’s Building and Sites Fund since the rest of the money will be paid by two grants from the federal government, including a 1.8 million dollar Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund grant.

“So the project came in approximately $3.6 million. And we have about a million, I think 1,800,000 through the ESSER funds. So we have that, and then the tax credits will be approximately a little over a million dollars too, so the reality is, is the district should, I would think worst case scenario just on the system itself, I think the district will approximately have to come up with about four or $500,000 and then that comes out of our Buildings and Sites Fund that we have, but we’re basically going to get a $3.6 million project for, you know, four or 500,000 dollars,” Kelly said. 

Although the district has to put down 400,000 to 500,000 dollars to pay for the system, the project should pay for itself over time because the new system will be cheaper to run than the boiler system in combination with the boiler system’s maintenance costs.

“And the reality is if the savings are there, you know, they said worst case scenario, we’d save 75,000 dollars per year on our utility bill. So you know, it takes not very long until you’ll get that, you’ll be able to pay for that back of the four or 500,000 that the district comes up with just by the utility savings,” Kelly said.

One reason the new system will be cheaper to run is that the project includes replacing the current piping throughout the school from the original 1955 system which is prone to leaking.

“I think it’s a very needed update. Especially on the maintenance side with the steam lines. We’re constantly having to fix broken pipes and stuff. Just steam is so hard on piping. I mean it just eats it away. So it’s gonna be a lot nicer to have I think. It’ll be easier to maintain the temperatures within the classrooms, so it’ll be a little bit more comfortable for everybody,” Matt Griess, the HPS Head of Maintenance, said. 

Besides saving the district money on utilities in the long run, one benefit of the new system is that there will be more control over the temperature in each room.

“I mean, these will have units up on the ceiling up here, and they’ll be able to be controlled basically per room. You know, right now each univent has a thermostat. But like if this room is warm, that one’s cold, and then the next one’s fine down there, we still have to pump water through these. So I think it’ll have a lot more control at the teacher level and the student level that, you know, you’ll be able to control them… so I think that’s a huge benefit,” Kelly said.

The main reason Kelly wanted to get the project out of the way was because of the risk of the boiler system failing which would cause school to be canceled for a long time.

“I just think it was probably the biggest thing for me to, you know, take the variables out of listen, if the system fails, we’re not having school for a long time, the system, the piping in here, as you know is from 1955, and I just really felt like we had to do something. If we didn’t do something, it was just a matter of time until, you know, something broke and we were not going to be able to repair it, and we would have been out of school for a significant amount of time,” Kelly said.

Kelly thinks that people in the building after the new system is up and running will notice a difference between the two systems, and they will appreciate the perks of a more modern system.

“Yeah, I think (people in the building) will definitely notice the system change between the two. I mean, I think the big thing is it would be more individual control for the teachers, I think that’d be huge. I don’t think it’ll be as loud. I just think it’ll be much more efficient and a system more designed for the 21st century unlike what we have right now,” Kelly said.