Board approves repairing high school chiller
By Steve Van Kooten
The Prairie du Chien Board of Education held a special meeting on Sept. 2 to address the high school building’s air conditioning issue.
At the board’s Aug. 11 meeting, District Administrator Andy Banasik announced the school’s chiller system had failed earlier in the month. Since then, the majority of the building has been without air conditioning.
Multiple neutral parties have already looked at the system in an attempt to ascertain the cause of the failure and subsequent electrical fire.
“We already had two neutral people, and they won’t know either until they dig into it more,” said Banasik.
There are three potential causes for the failure: the air conditioning unit ran low on glycol, an internal cooling unit malfunctioned or a surge-protection device — such as a breaker box or ground wire — ceased to function properly.
Glycol is a fluid that protects HVAC units against freezing temperatures. The school’s staff last checked the unit’s glycol level on July 30 (two days before the failure), and the system was not low at the time.
The second possibility would have occurred because an internal cooling unit used to protect its hardware from overheating stopped working, frying the motherboards.
The last possible cause is that one or more precautions used to protect the unit from a power surge stopped working, and an outage or some influx of energy damaged the unit.
According to Banasik, representatives from the school’s insurance company will arrive on Sept. 11 to inspect the system. Without insurance, the cost to replace the damaged equipment is approximately $150,000, and the total unit is $400,000.
The school’s insurance deductible is $25,000.
“We’re on the books for $25,000 to get those motherboards replaced,” said Banasik. “It’s probably going to take four to six weeks to get them here.”
Vicki Waller said she already submitted the bid to supply the motherboards from Trane, a company out of La Crosse that manufactured the unit.
Banasik estimated the repairs will be completed in six to eight weeks.
The board unanimously approved ordering the replacement equipment.
In attendance were Kyle Maahs, Michael Higgins, Jr., Noah White, Nick Gilberts and Lacie Anthony. Also present were Banasik and Waller. Lonnie Achenbach and Dustin Brewer were absent.
