07/13/17 — HV/AC units to be installed at school gyms.

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HV/AC units to be installed at school gyms.

By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on July 13, 2017 5:50 AM

The Wayne County Board of Education voted Monday to approve engineering consultation fees for HV/AC unit projects in four school gyms.

The four schools, Fremont STARS Elementary, Grantham Elementary, Rosewood Middle and Brogden Middle, are the last four in the district without air conditioning in their gyms, said Dean Sauls, assistant superintendent for support services.

With Wayne County under a heat advisory as the heat index climbs over 100 degrees, making sure the buildings are properly cooled is as important as ever. Sauls said that athletic events in particular have been tough in the gyms.

"To put it to you this way, it gets awfully hot in there during a volleyball game when it's hot outside," he said.

At the Monday meeting, the board approved an engineering fee proposal from EnTech Engineering which set the initial consultation costs at $9,600 per building, totaling to $38,400.

The specifications that will come from that project are important, Sauls said, because the buildings in question were built during the 1940's and 50's and were not designed to support air conditioning.

Rosewood Middle in particular is a challenge because of later additions which took up needed space.

"In the 1980's, they came in and built new locker rooms in the back and a new concession stand up front," he said. "The other three shouldn't be much of a problem, but Rosewood will be more difficult."

The solution may be to place the units on the roof, which Sauls said is possible because of the building's steel beams. According to the fee proposal, EnTech will charge an additional $2,000 to $4,000 per building where roof-mounted structures are necessary.

The previous two HV/AC projects, at Goldsboro High and Carver Heights Elementary, took around three months from beginning to end, Sauls said. Based on that, he hopes to have the new units fully installed by Christmas.

"We're hoping to have them ready for the Spring weather, but we wouldn't have them during the fall," he said.