FARMINGTON — RSU 9 directors voted unanimously Tuesday to go ahead with installing a pellet-boiler system to heat Cascade Brook School, Mt. Blue Middle School and the district bus garage.
The projected cost is $900,000, including permitting. The goal is to make it cost-neutral with the money currently raised for oil to be used to pay for the new system, Superintendent Mike Cormier said.
The payback is 15 years but could be as long as 20 years, he said.
He believes that oil will continue to ramp up in price but hasn’t seen pellets do the same, he said. The district paid the same for pellets this year for other schools as they did last year, he said.
Cormier encouraged the board to go forward with the project that is expected to provide cost savings that would benefit taxpayers in the long term.
He signed an application Monday for a no-interest loan so the district would have that option.
Due to the elimination of constructing a 600-square-foot building behind the middle school to service all three buildings, the project no longer has to go before voters in all 10 towns, David Leavitt, director of support services said.
The project would have been more expensive if the building was needed, project engineer Yuri Kowalski said.
The boiler will be installed in the boiler room at Cascade Brook School at the end of Learning Way and the heat will be piped 5 feet underground along the road to the other two buildings, said Dan Thayer, president of Thayer Corp. in Auburn.
Leavitt said that seven proposals were submitted for the project and a committee interviewed three companies and Thayer Corp. was chosen. The district has worked with the company before on different systems.
It is anticipated the pellet boiler will reduce the consumption of oil by 60 to 80 percent, Thayer said.
The boiler has a life expectancy of 20 years.
Cormier said even if the boiler fails in 20 years, all the district would need to do is replace the boiler.
Leavitt said he believes the project would reduce the buildings consumption of oil by 95 percent.
“My goal is we don’t burn oil,” Leavitt said.
The existing boilers will stay in the buildings as back-ups.
The project installation could start on July 15 and is expected to be online around the time school starts.
Kowalski said he didn’t anticipate the project affecting school business.
Director Robert Flick of Farmington thanked Cormier and Leavitt for the work they did on the project.
dperry@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.