Air Conditioner Malfunctions on First Day

Sometime between noon and 2 p.m. the central air conditioning system stopped functioning on Tuesday, Aug. 13 and caused a heat wave to overtake the third, fourth and fifth floors.

“When the [students] came back that was when we really noticed a difference in [temperature],” said head custodian Jeff Gillenwater, “I noticed a biggest load on the system.”

The school heating and cooling system is composed of pipes running throughout the building which are connected to each other and filter through a central heating and cooling system. The air conditioners will cool a room to about 73 degrees and then shut off to save energy. During that time the temperature can climb back to around 78 degrees before it will start cooling the room again.

In one room, 519, the temperature registered at 82 degrees.

“[Principal] McKinney came into the classroom,” said Kristin Fry, the teacher in room 519, “…and he apologized to the students and commended them on ‘powering through and bearing with us while we work on this problem’ because… all my sixth hour students…were rosy cheeked and starting to fall asleep because [the room] was overheating them”.

“There are over 20 different heating and cooling systems throughout the school,” said Gillenwater “But the third, fourth and fifth floors work on the univents which does it’s own cooling and heating in the room itself.

It was those univents which stopped functioning properly, that caused the heat wave in school Tuesday afternoon. Several places however were not affected by the shutting down of this univent system, because they run on a separate cooling systems. These place were the main office, counseling center, library, the gyms, the north end of the school.

Less than 24 hours after the cooling system died, the necessary repairs have been completed and it is up and running. However it will take a little time for the system to cool all the rooms in on the third, fourth and fifth floors and  reestablish it’s previous efficiency.