Leaders ice $30K boiler repair job

EAST HAMPTON >> The Town Council has proposed spending $30,000 on emergency repairs to the boilers in the Center School, even as it looks at options for their eventual replacement.

The twin boilers in the three-quarters-of-acentury-old school are showing their age and then some, Board of Education Facilities Director Donald Harwood told the Town Council on Tuesday. In an effort to keep the boilers functioning, “almost $80,000 has been spent on them since 2011,” Harwood said.

Even though construction on the school building itself began in 1900s, Harwood said the building will outlast most of the more recent, but less

permanent, buildings that have been built along Route 66.

And not just them, Harwood added.

“We will go on with our lives and beyond and that building will still be standing,” he said.

That said, Harwood did acknowledged that, given its age, “There are all sorts of challenges in that building, including residual asbestos and some hazardous materials.”

Over the past two years, successive town councils considered, but ultimately rejected, a plan to convert the school into a new municipal complex housing town offices, as well as, perhaps, the Board of Education and the police department. The present council has moved on from that proposal and is exploring two of eight proposals for new sites for a Town Hall/police station. But that still leaves the aging boilers.

There are, Harwood acknowledged, a range of options, as he asked for $90,000 to conduct an engineering study on the state of the boilers.

“You could do relatively nothing,” he told the council. Or, “You can ‘run things to failure,’” Harwood said, adding, “That’s a term that is well-known in the industry.”

Specifically, Harwood said mud drums and nipples associated with the boilers are already failing.

A mud drum is “a drum beneath a boiler, into which sediment and mud in the water can settle for removal,” according to a definition in The Free Dictionary.

As to nipples, they are used to connect the mud drum to a boiler.

“The mud drum to which the sections are attached at the lower end of the rear headers, is a forgedsteel box 7¼ inches square, and of such length as to be connected to all headers by means of wrought nipples expanded into counterbored seats,” according to a definition in a section on Babcock & Wilcox boilers on the website Basiccarpentrytechniques.com.

There are 17 nipples on each of the Center School boilers, for a total of 34,” Harwood said. They each cost roughly $7,500, and replacing each one of them “takes 6.5 hours,” he said.

Should one or the other of the boilers fail, “We’re probably going to let them go and pray for global warming,” Harwood said.

He has identified a portable boiler that can be trucked to the site. However, it would take 24 to 36 hours to arrive and then installing it would take three to five days, Harwood said.

A new boiler would cost between $800,000 and $1 million, Harwood estimated, and they could only be installed when school is not in session, “so we can meet the educational needs and still get the job done.”

Harwood came to the council seeking $90,000 to embark on an engineering review about replacing the boilers.

Councilor Mark Philhower, an HVAC contractor, supported spending $30,000 for the nipple replacement program. But he balked at spending $90,000 for an engineering study, as did his colleague, James “Pete” Brown.

“We don’t need to spend $90,000 to get someone to come and tell us what we already know,” Brown said.

Saying the boiler replacement “could be phased,” Philhower called for a obtaining a design/build proposal from a contractor.

“The design/build would be included in the bid,” he said.

Councilor Kevin Reich cautioned that replacing the boilers could not be done until 2018.

“Then that process has to be started now,” Councilor Melissa Engel said.

Reich concurred. “I’ve had it with the blanketyblank boiler.”

“I’ve been living lived with it for 33 years,” Reich said, referencing his career in the school system, including several years as assistant superintendent.

The council tabled the matter to return to it at a later date.