MEKEA WILLIAMSON
ASST. NEWS EDITOR
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The Waverly Fire Station |
The Waverly Fire Station is using a new heating and cooling system in an effort to become more economically and environmentally friendly.
Volunteer Fire Chief Dan McKenzie says the new building was built in May, and the heating method added $200,000 more to the project cost.
“Working with the architect and the mechanical engineer, they said that within three to five years we should have the best of it paid back in utilities,” McKenzie said.
“From what I’ve been told, we doubled the square footage but should only see about a 15 to 20 percent increase in utility cost.”
McKenzie said the station has 35 volunteer firefighters, but no one is around during 90 percent of the day, so the temperature does not need to be constant.
However, when a meeting is taking place at the station, the individual thermostats can be useful in turning up or down the heat in particular areas to cut utility costs.
New heat exchangers in the station have replaced the old radiator models commonly found in most houses. Water is pumped through the exchangers and air is blown across the water to heat or cool it.
McKenzie said the system should be low maintenance. In the mechanical room of the station, a pump distributes water from the river throughout the entire station for heating and cooling.
“Actually it’s real simple from my understanding,” he said. “The ground water we are holding in is at a constant 55 degrees year-round. So in the summer they just need to cool that down a little bit… in the winter time they just need to heat it a little bit.”
He said because the underground water is at a constant temperature, it helps lower costs for utilities and keeps equipment functioning better.
McKenzie said the station is pumping water out of the middle aquifer, an underground layer of water-bearing materials like rock, gravel, sand or clay.
“Water gets pumped, filtered and treated, and then it gets dumped back into the river. We continue to turn water,” he said.
Another feature of the heating and cooling system, also known as a geothermal system, is coils underground to heat up the station and maintain a constant temperature.
“In the old heaters, it had to cool down three or four degrees or warm up three or four degrees for them to kick on, so we always had the fluctuations, which is kind of hard on your equipment sometimes,” McKenzie said.
Although heating is one of the major expenses for the station, they also had to consider electricity. The lighting is even energy efficient, as the station only turns on lights in certain areas.
McKenzie said they also try to separate areas for emergency responses, meetings and other similar functions.
The new sta-tion also has a generator large enough to run the whole complex if they were to lose electricity.
“We had people who would stay at the fire station because they didn’t have heat at home, but because our old station was so small we didn’t have sleeping quarters for them, so they had to go somewhere else to sleep,” he said.
Now, the fire station can be used as an emergency shelter. The station has a full-functioning kitchen and rooms set up like a dormitory, which can host 50 to 60 people.
The city paid for the fire station and geothermal system using a local option sales tax.
The first project to utilize the local option sales tax was the city’s portion of the jail and dispatch center. The second project was the fire station and a new fire truck.
The volunteer firefighters will host a pancake breakfast Saturday, Oct. 6 at the Waverly Fire Station from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
The breakfast is one of three fundraisers the fire station sponsors per year.
Proceeds will go to fire prevention programs in schools, purchasing new fire equipment and allocating funds for maintenance.
The fire station also has a generator large enough to run the whole complex if they were to lose electricity.
“We had people who would stay at the fire station because they didn’t have heat at home, but because our old station was so small we didn’t have sleeping quarters for them, so they had to go somewhere else to sleep,” he said.
Now, the fire station can be used as an emergency shelter. The station has a full-functioning kitchen and rooms set up like a dormitory, which can host 50 to 60 people.
The city paid for the fire station and geothermal system using a local option sales tax.
The first project to utilize the local option sales tax was the city’s portion of the jail and dispatch center. The second project was the fire station and a new fire truck.
The volunteer firefighters will host a pancake breakfast Saturday, Oct. 6 at the Waverly Fire Station from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
The breakfast is one of three fundraisers the fire station sponsors per year.
Proceeds will go to fire prevention programs in schools, purchasing new fire equipment and allocating funds for maintenance.