AUBURN — A contraption that allows Androscoggin County’s courthouse and jail to be heated by natural gas will finally go to work, potentially saving taxpayers as much as $100,000 in its first year.
This week, workers are installing natural gas lines and regulators to feed the buildings’ roughly 25-year-old boiler which has always burned heating oil.
But the boiler was actually made to burn either heating oil or natural gas.
“Past commissioners had purposely bought it, but they never hooked it up,” said David Cote, the county building’s maintenance supervisor. A gas line already serves the county complex, which uses gas in the jail kitchen.
“We don’t have to dig or anything,” Cote said. “All we had to do was install the regulators and some pipe.”
The installation will likely cost just over $45,000 and cheaper natural gas will be used as soon as the existing oil is spent, he said.
The savings are likely to be experienced as soon as temperatures fall.
On average, the jail and courthouse consume 85,000 gallons each winter. Currently, the county is paying $3.06 for No. 2 oil. That’s a possible cost of $260,101 for a single season’s heat.
“We could get double our money back in year one,” Cote said.
It’s a message that was warmly received by county commissioners.
“To spend $50,000 to save $100,000 or $150,000? It makes no sense not to do it,” said Randall Greenwood, chairman of the county commission.
So why has the change taken this long? Neither Greenwood nor Cote know the answer.
“I can’t speak for prior commissioners and their decisions,” Greenwood said.
Cote brought up the issue soon after he was promoted to maintenance supervisor about three years ago, but the notion was put aside amid talk of a large scale, multimillion dollar renovation of the county complex.
No one knew what the cost would be to connect the boiler to a natural gas line, or what it might save.
However, this summer, with renovations put on hold, the commission cleared Cote to call vendors and compare costs.
“It came to a point where we said, ‘Let’s talk about that gas thing again.'”
The results surprised both Cote and the commission.
“We didn’t realize the magnitude of the dollars we might save,” Greenwood said. “That’s when the commissioners made an immediate decision. OK. This budget item can’t wait.”
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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