New courthouse boiler to be operational soon

With an obvious chill in the air at their Tuesday evening meeting, the Putnam County Commissioners approved the purchase of a new Putnam County Courthouse boiler.

Maintenance staff moved quickly, with the unit onsite by Wednesday afternoon. Three county employees and three jail trustees wrestled the 800-pound unit to the courthouse basement, where maintenance men Tom Gilson and Ryan Johnson will spend the next few days installing it.

Purchased the new unit comes at a cost of $7,800.

Gilson and head custodian Brian Smith told the commissioners the county will save thousands of dollars by having an employee do the work.

For courthouse workers, the important thing is having a heating unit that can keep up with the old building's heating needs.

The courthouse currently has two boilers, only one of which is working. When even the "working" boiler failed one day last month with temperatures below 10 degrees, something had to be done.

The plan is to keep one of the two current boilers as a backup to the new unit.

While Gilson is spending most of his time installing the boiler in the coming days, the board approved extra hours for Johnson, a part-time employee.

Requests have been made to make the position permanently full time, but the commissioners will not take action until receiving an approved budget from the state, which has yet to come.

While the installation will solve the county's immediate problem of heating the courthouse, the heating and air system of the building still has a number of needs.

A number of fans on radiators throughout the building are in need of replacement and are likely the next issue to be addressed.

A longer-term issue is converting from a two-pipe system to a four-pipe system. Such a set-up would allow some offices to run the heating system while others are running the cooling system.

This has been an issue in the past, with offices on the first two floors running the heat, causing the rooms on upper floors to get entirely too hot because of rising heat.

The aging courthouse chiller has also been addressed in the past. A new unit would come with another large price tag.