Some of the most crucial parts of a school happen behind the scenes. While the heating and air-conditioning of a school may seem boring for some, it is a much-needed aspect that a school needs to thrive. Director of Facilities Rick Dusing oversees the maintenance department, the security department, and all of the construction at Parker. 

A number of boilers and chillers balance the temperature at Parker. The boilers create warmth in the school. Hot water is created and then used to heat the school, and cool water is used to cool the school by using chillers. “We have to watch the outside air temperature,” Dusing said. “When it’s really hot, the chillers are on, and we’re in full summer mode. In the winter, the boilers are on and we’re heating the school.”

Some areas of the school get less air being pumped into them than other areas of the school. “If you look in the lobby, there is no air being pumped in,” Dusing said. “There are radiant panels by the glass. They are just plastic panels that the hot water goes through, and it’s meant to keep the ice off the windows.”

When the outside temperature is between 65-75 degrees, Parker does not need heating or cooling in the school because the fresh air outside can be worked off of inside the school. “In the school, we like to have a lot of fresh air,” Dusing said.

When the school gets heated slightly or slightly cooler, sometimes teachers complain about their space being too warm or too cool. This has an easy fix.

“We can control the temperature almost like a thermostat,” Dusing said. “We have a building automation computer in the maintenance department. We can set the temperature for them.”

According to Dusing, there are currently no serious weather or temperature issues happening within the school. Although sometimes there are areas within the school where it cools overnight.

“At night, we lower the building’s temperature a little bit,” Dusing said, “because when you add people into the building the more heat is produced.”

One of the major problems regarding the school’s temperature in the past has been a motor that has burned out. It takes time to find a new motor for the school, which is then picked up, and, in some cases, the maintenance crew and other tradesmen are working all night to get the temperature in the school as close to perfect as possible for the following school day. 

Toward the beginning of the school year, a large crane sat near the front of the school. This was because one of the compressors on one of the chillers had stopped working.

“We literally had to rent a crane,” Dusing said, “Some of this stuff is so big that we can’t take it up the stairwell. So we have a crane, and we have to lift it up on the roof and take the old one down. Although, sometimes we might even have an area without heating or cooling for a day or two.”

The biggest temperature issue to date, according to Dusing, involves the unit ventilators. Unit ventilators can be found in all of the classrooms in Parker. They are large vents that blow outside air into the space, thus conditioning and ventilating the space. The ventilators used in Parker now are obsolete. They are around 25 years old and need to be updated soon. “I would say the biggest issue we have would be if these fail, it’s taking us a little longer to get them fixed,” said Dusing, “We need to start looking long term to revise the air conditioning to the newer generation.”

The plan is to replace these ventilators to match the new generation as soon as possible. Everything else involving temperature in the school is relatively new and functional. Without these operations within our school, school would not occur every day, and despite the issues that Parker occasionally goes through involving heating and cooling, these problems are always fixed as soon as possible in order to provide for the school life of all grades and positions.