Nottingham School Heating Failures

Expert opinion provided: corrosive water due to cheap anti-freeze, key heating system features not installed.

The Nottingham School Board devoted the first two hours of its meeting on December 18, 2024, to a presentation about the school’s heating problems from an HVAC specialist firm, followed by questions and comments from the audience of about a dozen concerned parents. This took two hours. Board Chairman Susan Levenson conducted the meeting. Superintendent HasBrouck was unable to attend.

On Monday morning, December 16, prompted by the abrupt closure of the school for that day, again due to a failure in the heating system, I emailed Superinentdent HasBrouck and Facilities Manager Scott Brown with questions about what was going on with the heating system. I received no response. On Facebook, I saw that many parents had become so frustrated with the situation that they were contacting the state Department of Education. Because of this, I contacted State Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut. He promptly responded by both email and phone. He said his office had received a huge number of calls and emails from Nottingham about the heating problems at Nottingham School. The state, however, has no authority or responsibility over the physical assets of local school districts, such as buildings and their heating systems. He has, however, been having ongoing discussions about the situation with our Superintendent. The state has an engineer on staff and has made that person available for consultation about our heating problems. To the best of Edelblut's knowledge, Palmer and Sicard are a well-regarded HVAC firm. It's unclear why one component of the school's heating system after another keeps failing.

Chairman Levenson began the School Board meeting by assuring the public that the school has a service contract for the heating system, which has received regular maintenance. The board is as frustrated and mystified as everyone else is about why so many components of the heating system are abruptly failing.

Mike Davey of Energy Efficient Investments (EEI) gave a presentation based on his firm’s analysis of the heating system’s problems. His company works with a large portion of schools in NH on major facilities projects, especially the larger SAUs.

The slides for the presentation can be found at the end of the School Board’s meeting packet.

EEI made their site visit on November 1 to collect data.

The major finding is that the quality of the water in the system is terrible - the worst EEI has ever seen. The water is highly acidic. It is corrosive. It is full of dissolved metal. EEI has seen three other schools with this problem. The problem is caused by using cheap glycol - glycol without additives to prevent corrosion - and failure to monitor the water quality.

This kind of problem gets worse over time. In one school in Vermont EEI worked with, every inch of pipe had to be replaced, at a cost of $1.9 million. In Franklin, NH, it destroyed the boilers. (Nottingham replaced its boilers last year). In Greenland, NH, the problem was caught before severe damage occurred. Only minor repairs were needed there.

Levenson noted that the glycol in the system was replaced last year when the new boilers were installed and the system was flushed. She recalled that the school was charged $19k for this.

EEI says that the water in the system must be replaced. The problem is that a full system flush takes three weeks, which means it cannot be done until the spring. Further, flushing is an expensive process, and it is expensive to treat the contaminated water removed from the system. They estimated that this would cost $30k to $45k.

Once the system is flushed, all of the gaskets in the system need to be inspected, and, since it is only slightly more expensive to replace the gaskets as it is to inspect them, they recommend just replacing all of the gaskets.

The pipes will need to be inspected for corrosion damage. This will require cutting into a sample of them. It’s possible that the pipes have become so damaged that they will have to be replaced. Levenson said that 39 feet of pipe has already needed to be replaced.

In the meantime, the water needs to be treated with anti-corrosion additives, and magnetic filters urgently need to be installed. Levenson said she thought additives had been applied since EEI’s inspection. EEI said there is so much metal in the water that the magnetic filters would need to be cleaned daily for an extended period. The metal comes from the pipes, which are being corroded by glycol. When the boilers get hot, the metal in the water will fuse to the hot surfaces. This will eventually make the boilers unusable. EEI said they once found brand-new boilers that had to be replaced because of this problem. They said Nottingham should install these filters tomorrow. There was some discussion among the board that they thought the prior boiler system had magnetic filters.

Glycol is added to a heating system as an anti-freeze. A heating system needs anti-freeze if it has sections of pipe that go through unheated, uninsulated areas subject to freezing. Only about 1% of the pipes in the heating system at Nottingham School are subject to freezing, all of which are associated with the six air handlers located in an uninsulated, unheated portion of the attic.

EEI thinks that any long-term solution to the school’s problems must involve addressing these air handlers. Their proposed solution possibilities are to:

• Isolate the air handlers from the rest of the system by creating a subsystem just for the air handlers. Only this subsystem would need anti-freeze. (Keene’s school used this solution).

• Insulating and heating around the portion of the attic where the heating pipes go.

• Replacing the air handlers with a new air-handling system to be located on ground level.

Levenson noted that the air handlers were already scheduled on the CIP to be replaced in 2026.

EEI thinks the school should replace the air handlers with ones that do not need anti-freeze. They also recommend using highly energy-efficient air handlers that capture heat that would otherwise be wasted.

EEI noted that the new boiler system the school installed last year is a smart boiler, but it lacks the $200k control system for enabling the smart features. One of these features is automatic notification of the maintenance staff of any malfunction in the system. Another feature would be that on only mildly cold days, the boiler would run at a lower temperature, substantially improving efficiency and lowering fuel costs.

Another feature would be automatic load shifting between the two boilers. Presently, the boilers are configured as master and slave. If the master boiler fails, someone must manually reconfigure the system to switch over to the other boiler to take advantage of the redundancy in the system. A smart system would automatically recognize a failure, take the boiler offline, notify maintenance, and shift the load to the functioning boiler.

On Sunday night, the pressure relief valve on the master boiler failed, causing air to enter the master boiler’s system, making the master boiler inoperable. A technician from Palmer and Sicard was at the school around midnight Sunday, but was unable to bleed the air out of the master boiler’s system.

Other problems EEI noticed were that many of the heating valves have failed, and some of the interior vents are in poor shape. The kitchen water heaters also need to be replaced.

EEI presented some preliminary cost figures for the work they recommend.

• $6.5K for a remote monitoring system

• $9.6k for new strainers, many of which are now clogged.

• $10.0k to install magnetic filters

• $30k to $45k to flush and recharge the system [Note the large difference here between this quote and the $19k the school paid last year to have the system flushed. Was the system properly flushed? Was the low price due to cheap glycol?]

• $55k for a subsystem just for the air handlers.

• $28k annual service contract

The work would come with a performance guarantee.

In addition to this, in EEI’s inspection of the building, they found opportunities to upgrade the lighting system that would bring down the lighting bill by 30%, and they found sections of the ceiling that lack the fire-sealing needed to meet current code. They also discussed the possibility of installing a sprinkler system. This would cost about $1 million.

In wrapping up the presentation, EEI outlined some opportunities to obtain outside funding. The primary opportunity is a state building aid grant. Applications are due April 1. Funding decisions are made in the autumn. EEI is currently helping Epsom, Nashua, and Windham with applications. Recently, they helped Rochester and Sunapee with applications. Rochester received a grant covering 50% of its project, involving a 1928 building. Sunapee received 25%.

The Federal government provides a 40% grant to convert systems to geothermal, and 30% grants for solar conversions.

In June, the state will be opening up a bond funding opportunity, with interest below 3%.

Some school districts fund projects like this with bonds. Currently, most schools EEI deals with are covering major equipment acquisitions with lease-to-own financing.

Once EEI concluded its presentation, the floor was opened for questions and comments from the public. There were about a dozen people in attendance.

I asked EEI how a situation like this snuck up on the school. Levenson said that the school has always done what the vendor has told the school to do. Members of the audience called out to dispute this. No one from EEI answered my question. The inference I made from this was that EEI had invested a large amount of time investigating the maintenance failures in the school’s heating system and explaining them to us. They were not going publicly rub this in the nose of the school’s vendor by calling them out.

Members of the public asked to see the proposals the school had received for the boiler replacement project to see if the magnetic filters and smart controls had been recommended. Members of the board pointed out that this is all publicly available information. It can be found in the meeting packets; although it’s possible that some might be missing if they were brought to the meeting at the last minute as hard copies. At the conclusion of the meeting, Chairman Levenson said that the board would assemble all of these and make them available to the public.

There was a discussion about how little time was available to draft warrant articles for funding any major projects to the school. Chairman Levenson expressed concern that if a warrant article for the heating system were to fail, the school might be legally prohibited from repairing the system due to the no-means-no rule.

She also said that the board was waiting for another professional analysis of the heating system, to be provided by the Turner Group. Another analysis will be coming from the school’s current vendor, Palmer and Sicard. The results of another test of the water will also be forthcoming. Levenson said that it has been difficult to get experts in to investigate the problem because at this time of year they are busy doing repairs. It’s bad timing to get proposals done. The board has also received a quote for treating the water to reduce its acidity.

Many members of the audience expressed concerns about the calendar. Already this year the students have lost four days - and winter hasn’t even started. The School Board said that the plan is to utilize remote learning as much as possible during winter storms. However, for this to happen the school needs to give 1-2 days advance notice to the teachers so that they can prepare. The board is considering shortening the February and April vacations. The board is also considering applying for a waiver.

There was a discussion about how the new calendar based on days of instruction, rather than the calendar used last year, based on hours of instruction, removes the option of lengthening the school day to make up for the lost days.

A member of the audience was concerned that remote learning had not been utilized during the days the school was closed due to heating problems. The audience member read out loud the RSA:

The school shall have in its school year an additional 60 hours in duration to provide for instructional time lost due to inclement weather or unexpected circumstances, staff development, and parent-teacher conferences. At least 30 of the 60 additional hours shall be available for rescheduling hours lost due to inclement weather or other emergencies. Schools shall use these additional hours to reschedule lost instructional time before requesting a waiver of the amount of instructional time under RSA 189:2, unless extraordinary circumstances exist that would place an unreasonable burden on the school or students such as, but not limited to, substantial building damage;

She asked why doesn’t the school consider the failure of its heating system to be an emergency? Chairman Levenson said that this was because the board had received guidance from the Superintendent that remote learning was only allowable for weather events; however, the board will now revisit the issue.

Audience members expressed concern that the board had no impartial HVAC expert to whom the board could turn.

An audience member asked if the heating system was checked every weekend. Chairman Levenson said it was regularly inspected, but she did not know if there was a regular weekend inspection.

A member of the audience said that the most recent maintenance plan for the heating system was dated December 2022.

There was a discussion about the role of the school’s facilities committee. The purpose of this committee is to address long-range planning issues, specifically, expansions to the school. It is not responsible for maintenance issues. These issues are addressed by the board. Delegating them to the facilities committee for review would slow down decision-making.

Several members of the audience expressed concerns about the letters the school had sent to parents about the heating issues. They found them lengthy, hard to understand, and uninformative. The letters failed to give the parents confidence that the problems were being solved and that decisions were being made correctly. Samples of three of these letters are below.

At the conclusion of public comment, Chairman Levenson said that the board would prepare a document for the public covering the history of the heating issues, and provide documentation on the quotes, proposals, and requests for proposals.