Powder River Examiner -

Broadus High School students found themselves on a mid-winter break last week complete with "work from home" duties, as heating issues at the school compounded to force the closure of the school throughout most of the week.

Meanwhile for school maintenance personnel, their week was anything but work from home, as they toiled long hours and stayed overnight at the school to fix on equipment and monitor the heaters.

Sometime in the -33 temps between Friday January 12th and the 13th a burst water line at the unit ventilator (the in-room heater) in the study hall room on the southwest corner of the high school resulted in a loss of pressure in one of the three pressurized hot water lines powered by the school's coal powered boiler. A second leak was found and patched in the math room on Sunday, which featured a low of -38 outdoors, but the lack of pressure shut down the boiler, according to School Superintendent Jim Hansen. This resulted in a lack of heat on Monday, and when combined with the -22 temps on Monday the decision was made to cancel school. School was in session Tuesday, but further leaks from the cold were found and caused a problem with the boiler, which pushed the school to engage in their "remote learning" process, with JH and HS students learning at home via Chromebook, while Elementary Students continued to attend class as normal throughout the rest of the week.

Hansen said that he came to school Thursday morning around 4 AM to check on the boiler and while it was running fine, a circulatory pump that powered one of the heating lines was severely leaking. Star Plumbing helped to fix the problem, alongside School Maintenance Men Brandon Schuetzle and Shawn Hayes, and by Friday evening the school heating was back to fully operational and on Monday the 22nd school went on as usual.

Ultimately, six unit ventilators will need to be replaced, and the circulatory pump which leaked along with the five other pumps were already scheduled to be replaced this spring; full replacement requires shutting down the system so the school will wait until the heating system is not needed to warm the classrooms. Hansen mentioned that one previous addition that helped significantly to keep the rooms relatively warm was the addition of mini-split heating/cooling units in a number of the classrooms. These electric units, which had been initially installed with the primary purpose of providing AC to the rooms, also worked to maintain warm temps while the boiler tried to keep up.

The school has a secondary boiler which is basically an antique and is not operational. Plans had been in the works to replace it with a propane powered boiler as a sort of secondary system in case of primary boiler problems, but that plan has not come to fruition.

Future plans to alleviate heating problems include looking into a text generated warning if pressure or temperature are lost in the boiler, in order to have maintenance personnel on hand more quickly to fix the problem. Other ideas on maintenance and other heating related issues are likely to be discussed at future school board meetings.

Superintendent Hansen and Head Maintenance Man Brandon Schuetzle inspect the heating circulation pumps.

Currently, someone checks the boiler every 12 hours, and during last week's boiler problems, much more frequently. During this period, Schuetzle, Hayes, and Superintendent Hansen worked late into the night and even stayed at the school overnight to monitor the boiler, check for leaks in the unit ventilators, and maintain the system of eight diesel and propane space heaters which kept warm air circulating through the school.

Broadus Schools was not the only area facility to experience closures due to heating/water troubles. Colstrip and Newell, SD shut down classes for portions of last week, while boiler problems at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge and Pine Hills Correctional Facility in Miles City also caused heating issues. The widespread cold conditions also shut down schools in Missouri, Ohio, and 31 schools in the San Antonio, Texas area.