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Mount Greylock Building Committee Weighs HVAC Options
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
02:12AM / Wednesday, September 16, 2015
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Mount Greylock School Building Committee co-Chairmen Mark Schiek and Paula Consolini.
One of the many dehumidifiers in the Mount Greylock Regional School hallways. The building committee is discussing heating and air conditioning options for the proposed new school.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — While the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee tries to hold the district together, the School Building Committee continues to put together plans for a renovated junior-senior high school.
 
At its most recent meeting, the committee focused largely on the mechanical systems for the addition/renovation project the district has proposed to the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
 
Michael Walsh of Canton's Consulting Engineering Services took the committee members through a number of options for heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
 
"It's a big decision," Walsh said. "The plant has the opportunity to save you a lot of money on utility costs or cost you a lot of money."
 
The committee is expected to revisit the important decision at its Sept. 24 meeting and make final decisions by Oct. 8 in order to allow the district's architects to continue with the project's schematic design. That design phase includes the final cost estimate that will go to MSBA and determine the size of the bond voters will be asked to approve early next year.
 
Among the mechanical systems considerations for the panel: whether to include air conditioning or dehumidification for all or parts of the building and what type of system delivers warm and/or cool air to the building.
 
The three system options discussed included variable air volume, chilled beams and variable refrigerant volume, also known as a variable refrigerant flow system.
 
Walsh explained that each of those options has pros and cons. While the variable air volume design is the most familiar and conventional system, it provides poorer humidity control and is less energy efficient than the more modern options.
 
On the other hand, a "VAV" system would cost less to install, Walsh said, costing as much as $2 to $5 less per square foot compared to a chilled beam system, which, in turn, would be less expensive to operate than the even more energy-efficient VRV system.
 
The committee is very conscious of costs — both the upfront cost of the building project itself and the long-term cost of operating the building. Greater energy efficiency is one of the arguments in favor of renovating the 1960 building.
 
At its Sept. 24 meeting, it hopes to have more precise energy modeling estimates available to do a cost/benefit analysis on the proposed systems.
 
The committee appeared to be uninterested in pursuing geothermal technology, which has the upside of very efficient building operation but the downside of a very expensive installation.
 
Walsh told the committee that for a building the size of the planned renovated Mount Greylock, he would recommend using between 120 and 160 bores, drilled 500 feet into the ground. The bores would cost typically $10,000 apiece, or from $1.2 million to $1.6 million for the bore field alone.
 
The return on investment would take between 32 and 48 years, Walsh said. And his installation numbers do not take into account the possibility of opening up the building project to higher cost of remediation for underground contamination found when boring for the geothermal holes.
 
The bore field to support the school's HVAC would be about the size of a football field, Walsh said. If any contaminants were found in the process of drilling the geothermal bores, remediation work would be required — site work that would not be eligible for compensation from the MSBA.
 
A trickier question involves how much of the building to equip with air-conditioning. Principal Mary MacDonald, Superintendent Douglas Dias and School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene noted that air-conditioning some of the building's common spaces — like the cafeteria, the meeting room and the auditorium — would make the building more of a community resource for year-round events.
 
Committee member Robert Ericson, also a member of the Lanesborough Board of Selectmen, said he does not think it is important that the renovated school be available as a community space.
 
"We have a ton of community space available in the Williamstown, North Adams area," Ericson said. "It's an argument I don't buy."
 
And he does not think it is a feature that taxpayers will be prepared to buy.
 
"If we keep looking like we're going to make this a golden cow, I have news for you, it's going to be a tough sell in Lanesborough and probably with some people in Williamstown because they don't have air-conditioning in their homes," Ericson said. "If we look like we're doing our due diligence and looking at austerity, that will sell it."
 
School Committee member Richard Cohen, a Lanesborough resident, agreed.
 
"It's hard to justify [air-condtioning] as directly impacting education," Cohen said. "We really need to justify whatever we're doing very carefully."
 
An alternative might be to limit air-conditioning to spaces that are are used all year — like the school's administrative offices — while using dehumidifying equipment in the classroom spaces and the hallways. In 2013, Mount Greylock was forced to close early one day and cancel a second day of classes because of moisture built up in the halls in September; currently the school uses portable dehumidifiers throughout the building to keep the hallways dry.
 
Owner's project manager Trip Elmore of Dore & Whittier told the committee dehumidification can be an effective alternative.
 
"I'm finishing a job at Ayer Shirley [Regional School District] where the system is different depending on the space," Elmore said. "It's fully air-conditioned in the administration because it's occupied all summer long. The classrooms are dehumidified. There are many days when it's 85 degrees out and you'd walk into the classrooms and swear they're air-conditioned. And there are certain areas where they determined it's not worth touching — for example, the gym, they decided that in the summer, it has a 35-foot ceiling and cool air stays at the bottom."
 
Elmore suggested that the committee might want to have a working group convene to discuss which parts of the renovated Mount Greylock would be equipped with air-conditioning or dehumidification.
 
In other business at the Sept. 3 meeting, the School Building Committee formed working groups to look at interior and exterior building materials, decided to ask for proposals from four firms interested in being the project's construction manager at risk and decided to move forward with geotechncial surveys of the land where the district wants to build an addition.
 
The geotech surveying will be done Columbus Day weekend next month, so it is unlikely to disrupt classes or any other activities at the school, the committee was told.
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