Bond Referendum | November 4, 2025
UHS MECHANICAL ROOM REVIEW
By Doug Stephens
ES&C Sales Engineer
Trane US, Inc.
Tucked away in a basement mechanical room at Union High School is something that community members should be aware of: The original heating and cooling systems serving an area of the building that ranges from 50-70 years old. That's two to three lifetimes for an HVAC system. These existing boilers require daily hands-on manual intervention — water treatment, blowdown, condensate return system maintenance, etc. — to avoid failures and downtime.
Operation and maintenance of steam boilers is becoming a thing of the past. Steam boilers typically only remain in hospitals and some large institutions. A failed steam pipe or fitting would be extremely dangerous for students and staff. They are very costly to maintain and the risk of a catastrophic failure is only increasing as they age. That could result in building damage, emergency replacement, possible freezing of areas of the building, and cost much more to the district than a planned replacement. The fire-tube steam boilers are also very inefficient and costly for the school district to operate in terms of natural gas usage. New, efficient condensing hot water boilers are safer, less expensive to maintain, and more than twice as efficient.
In addition to this, some of the newer HVAC systems in the building rely on heat from these boilers to reheat year-round for dehumidification. The school cannot run these boilers year-round because they overheat other areas of the building and cannot "turn-down" enough in the warm months. Therefore, humidity cannot be properly controlled in the building year-round. Humidity control is important to keep mold out of the building and while also providing proper ventilation. The maintenance staff has worked wonders to manage the cards they have been dealt.
Cooling for this area of the building is provided by a 50-year-old McQuay chiller with a remote air-cooled condenser. This chiller uses R-12 refrigerant, which has been out of production since 1995. There are strict EPA regulations regarding tracking of refrigerant and leak repairs with follow-up leak checks. Refrigerant piping of this age becomes more and more leaky and difficult to patch and repair with the copper becoming more brittle over time. If a leak cannot be repaired, condemnation of the equipment is mandatory.
Existing pneumatic controls are still serving some classrooms in this area of the building. An inefficient air compressor runs in the mechanical room to pressurize leaky pneumatic tubing that is more expensive to repair than to replace.
Very few HVAC technicians have the skills, tools and training to work on these systems — steam boilers, reciprocating compressors, and pneumatic controls. Repair parts are scarce, expensive, difficult to identify, and may only be available on eBay.
Not only are these systems costing the school district significant amounts of money in the form of utility bills, but significant repair costs to keep these systems are going to turn into catastrophic or emergency situation if replacements are not completed soon.
