Lewis County Schools Superintendent Jamie Weddington released a letter today to address recent issues with air conditioning at Lewis County High School:
“Dear LCHS Stakeholders:
Lewis County High School has been undergoing major renovations since the spring of 2021. A significant part of this 7.5 million dollar project is the complete replacement and upgrade of the heating and cooling system.
When you renovate an existing school, the work is typically done in phases with different sections of the building being completed at different times. It is simply not possible to complete a renovation/upgrade of an 83,000 sq. ft. building without phasing the work. This plan was contingent on our 20+ year old primary and secondary chiller components continuing to function until they were replaced. The new replacement primary chiller has finally been built by the manufacturer and is scheduled to be delivered next month. The manufacturing of this component has taken significantly longer than normal.
Yesterday morning, August 24, our secondary chiller completely failed beyond repair and the primary chiller (after being repaired on Monday) went back down as well. The result, along with a hot day outside, was a very hot building.  During a normal year, this scenario would not have been good. For this year, the addition of state mandated masks, it created a mise rable day for both staff and students.
The primary chiller was repaired again at 5:00 pm yesterday evening and has operated the entire day without issue .
Today, our mechanical contractor (Donahue Mechanical), electrical contractor (JMK Electric), and general trade contractor (Trace Creek Construction) all pulled additional man power from other job sites to address this situation. Their focus, along with our school maintenance staff, was to get as much cooling out the existing repaired primary chiller as possible and to bring as many of the new roof top units into operation as possible. These three companies went above and beyond the terms and responsibilities of their contracts for our students and staff.
While the building is not completely cooled, it was much more tolerable today. As of 2:00 pm today, four new roof top units were operational and providing cool air to additional sections of the building in support of the primary chiller.
These units were not scheduled to be operational for several more weeks and have not been completely calibrated. They will be operating at full capacity and will have to be manually turned on and off but will provide much needed cool air. We expect most of the building to be closer to our normal temperatures by tomorrow morning pending no additional breakdowns of the primary chiller.
All of the contractors will continue working through next spring in various parts of the building. The final phase of the renovation is expected to be wrapped up next summer with new blacktop for the parking lot.
Respectfully with Lion Pride,
Jamie Weddington
Superintendent
Jack Lykins
Principal”
Click HERE for a PDF of the letter.
