Stonington Town Hall heating system work to start in spring

The town is preparing to seek bids on an estimated $1.2 million to $1.5 million project to upgrade the Town Hall heating system while also working to minimize the project’s disruption for employees and residents.

Town Engineer Chris Greenlaw said Friday that the project will improve efficiency and reduce maintenance costs by replacing the building’s inefficient 30-year-old oil-burning boiler with two propane-burning boilers. It will also add programmable thermostats in offices and new heating units to spread heat more evenly in the building.

“Anything, as compared to 30-year-old technology or a boiler, is going to be more efficient,” he said.

Greenlaw said the new propane boilers will not only provide redundancy for the system but also reduce costs for both fuel and maintenance.

“They’re going to use a fuel that is cleaner, but they’re also going to use less fuel to operate, so that is going to be a savings that we’ll see,” he said. He said a valve failed on the boiler Thursday and needed to be repaired.

“That’s a sustainable mechanical cost that we incur yearly, and that is going to go away,” he said.

The current radiant heat system in the building will be augmented with a small fan unit that will disperse heat from a coil of hot water pipes and create a more temperate environment with less temperature fluctuation, Greenlaw explained.

An initial plan included installing a new air conditioning system but was scaled back to include only the heat upgrade. Greenlaw said the work is designed so that a cooling system could be added at a later date.

“The project has already been scaled back. It was originally supposed to be the heat, the ventilation and the air conditioning, but now it’s just the heat component. Because

of funding and how expensive HVAC systems have been we’ve really had to scale it back,” First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough said Thursday.

Greenlaw said a great deal of planning has gone into minimizing disruptions to daily Town Hall operations while contractors complete the work, which is expected to begin in mid-May and run through early October.

The town is working on a plan to create flexible spaces that can be used by departments while work is being done.

“Basically, it will be like puzzle pieces moving. As different segments of Town Hall are done, certain people who are really public facing will be in different offices and other locations still in Town Hall so they can still interface with the public,” Chesebrough said.

Some departments may have limited access to office files, but others, with time-sensitive needs for access, will relocate files to temporary locations.

Departments that do not have significant public interaction may relocate to the Department of Public Works, the Police Department or may work from home.

Chesebrough said some non-public documents and other secured information may need to be transferred out of the building temporarily, while work would be finished more quickly — and maybe even on weekends — in some departments that cannot tolerate significant disruption, such as Information Technology.

“We’re hoping that contractors aren’t scared away by that,” Greenlaw said, adding he hopes the town’s proactive approach to planning will allow contractors and town employees to work at the same time.

Greenlaw said he hopes to have an invitation to bid posted by March 3, or shortly thereafter, with a bid award announced in mid-April so work can begin in May.