High School boilers coming later this month

Many people enjoyed the unusually low heating bills in December but perhaps none more so than the students and faculty of the Washington High School. The school is supposed to have two functioning boilers, but one of those is operating at 40 percent efficiency and the other boiler wasn?t working at all. That boiler was recently removed. Schools superintendent Mike Jorgensen said the high school was fortunate to receive such nice weather so that the one functioning boiler wouldn?t be overworked.    

?We appreciated the nice days we had because our current boiler is on its last legs,? he said. ?We?re feeling better every day we get closer to a new boiler.?

Ragan Mechanical of Davenport is the company responsible for installing the boilers. The company has to install the boilers this winter because of the time constraints associated with the grant the school district received. The school received a grant last fall from the Iowa Department of Energy Efficiency for $232,000, half the cost of the project. The grant requires that the school install the boilers before the end of March. The remainder of the project funds will come from the district?s Physical Plant Equipment Levy (PPEL) over the next 10 years.

Jorgensen said the two new boilers are scheduled to be delivered in the next two weeks. The company will install one boiler and then shut down the remaining old boiler. Once the last old boiler is removed the second new boiler will be installed.

?There will always be a period when at least one boiler is operating,? Jorgensen said. ?They had to expedite the shipping for the boilers. They were originally told their deadline was the end of February. The new boilers will be delivered Jan. 27, and once they?re delivered, the installation shouldn?t take very long.?

Underperforming boilers are not the only problem the high school faces. When the boilers are turned on, the amount of heat they put out varies substantially from one room to another. Jorgensen said that is because the pneumatic controls that regulate the heat coming into the rooms do not function properly.

?The pneumatic controls are old and shot,? Jorgensen said. ?As a result, some rooms get up to 100 degrees while others are very cold. Sometimes you?ll drive by the school and see an open window in the middle of December. It?s because the pneumatic controls don?t work.?

Jorgensen said this inefficiency is driving up costs and that once it?s fixed it should bring down heating bills.

?The heating is very inconsistent from room to room,? he said. ?I was over one day in Mrs. Zieglowsky?s room and her thermostat read 105. In other rooms, they crank it up as high as it can go and they can?t get it to 60. It has to be tough as a student if you sweat in one room and then can?t get warm in another. It?s got to be distracting, and it can?t be good for utility bills.?

A company called Johnson Controls has already begun recalibrating the school?s pneumatic controls, which it is doing at a cost of less than $50,000.

Jorgensen said the changes to the controls and boilers will also mean the school will be able to eliminate 90 percent of the banging noises the current heating system produces. He said the water heater will be discussed at an upcoming board meeting Thursday. He said the holding tank is quite large and the one the school will replace it with will be smaller and more efficient.

Once the district replaces the boilers in the current high school, the next heating project it will tackle is replacing the boiler in the junior high. Jorgensen said that boiler is not in good shape.

The new high school will be heated via geothermal heating. Jorgensen said the district is going to investigate the geothermal well to see if it could be used to heat the current junior high as well. Stewart Elementary employs geothermal heat. Jorgensen said the boiler at Lincoln Elementary is relatively new.