With the arrival of new and low temperatures as the winter season approaches, many students show concern with the cool temperatures inside the high school’s doors. Students have been seen inside classrooms wearing winter coats, shivering and can often be heard complaining.What many students want to know is what is being done about the low temperatures, what happened to cause them and why nothing was done sooner.

Gary E. Mortimer, Jr., the Director of Buildings and Grounds at FHS, has been a big part of the process involved with fixing the systems.

“At the high school, back at the end of September, we lost the main control board that operates every control and board for the heating and ventilation system,” Mortimer said. It was a popular, and now proven untrue, popular belief throughout the school that the system has been broken since last year.

“The school board worked very quickly and we got authorization to replace it. The contractor was given the work to get started and they ordered the materials,” Mortimer said.

“The computer system is 14 years old; the main board fried in it. There are no replacements [and] we can’t find any anywhere: Ebay, leftover ones [or] used ones. So, we had no choice; we had to update our systems,” Mortimer said. With this, the common rumor that the school chose not to do anything about the broken heating system until late in the year can be accepted as a misconception.

Yet, with this information provided, many students want to know why the process is taking so long.

“Sounds simple enough right: pull out a board, put in a board [and] you’re done? No, there are 22 rooftop units, we have 43 exhaust fans and we have about a half a dozen or so make-up air units. Every unit has two to three control boards in it that talks to the main motherboard,” Mortimer said.

Fixing each of the 22 rooftop units comes along with a long and meticulous process.

“They have to go unit by unit, pull out the control boards, update it with new sensors and new boards, and then eventually tie it back to a new set of graphics onto our computer system, so that we have control and we have the capability to change the temperatures and see what’s going on.[The contractors] are starting at 5 a.m. and they’re getting them changed out one unit at a time here,” Mortimer said.

Unfortunately, fixing all of these boards and designing graphics has not been the extent of the process.

“We had three units go down in two days. The units are 14 years of age. They’re getting older. This is going to be a common issue with units breaking, but were doing the renovation process part of it by updating the control system,” Mortimer said.

Knowing the age of the units, and just how quickly technology becomes outdated, many would ask why FHS won’t just invest in new units all together. Ignoring the massive price tag that would come with a project of that size, the lifespan of the units should be considered.

“I would say with the age of the units being 14 years we still have another ten to twelve years of usable life with these units,” Mortimer said.

As the weather continues to get colder many students just want to know when they will be able to walk into a warm classroom. But, like any project, it will take time and money.

“This renovation, with three guys doing a couple units a day, is going to take us probably another four to six weeks. The cost is going to be an excess of $120,000, so you know it’s not a small project. It’s a major, major deal,” Mortimer said.

As if having to deal with failing systems and freezing rooftop weather isn’t enough for the maintenance and contracting staff, but they have run into another major problem: lack of support and understanding from the school.

“What makes it the hardest is the lack of understanding that, when you have a facility of this size and you are trying to manage this many units, that things do break. We are trying to keep the building as warm as humanly possible, we’re not just starting with Unit 1 and working. We’re trying the very best that we can to attack the problem and make the least amount of impact on the staff and the students, and yet get it done, because it’s not going to get any warmer for several months,” Mortimer said.

It should also be considered how much extra time working with an outdated system can take.

“If we gave you a 14-year-old laptop and told you to do your work, it would be very difficult wouldn’t it?” Mortimer said.

“It’s going to get better, and the problem is it was bad timing that it happened at the end of September,” Mortimer said. “I would like to thank everybody for their patience and just know that we are doing everything that we can. I know that some of the rooms are a little on the chilly side when we’re shutting systems on and off,” Mortimer said.

The classrooms may be cold, but when you are getting ready to complain, consider the temperature on the roof where the heating systems are. The maintenance staff and contractors can often be found up there in the windchill working on the systems.