The entire 12-year-old heating system at Westbrook Middle School Westbrook may be replaced after years of costly failures of its geothermal pumps.

The problem came to a head a few weeks ago when a backup boiler failed after another had already broken, leaving the school with no heat and forcing it to close for two days to students.

The heating system, which cost roughly $8 million when it was installed, consists of 14 geothermal pumps in 10 1,500-foot wells and two backup boilers. The pumps, designed to be the main source of heating and cooling for the building, use electricity to heat or cool water pulled from deep within the ground. The pumps have been breaking down, sometimes daily, and putting a strain on the boilers.

The current system is “unreliable,” according to interim School Finance Director Brian Mazjanis, who said the frequent need for repairs was “ridiculous” and happening at “an alarming rate.”

Some pumps, which are supposed to last for at least 10 years, have worked only three years before needing to be replaced.

“We need to look at this,” Superintendent Peter Lancia said. “We can’t replace a pump every year and a boiler in 10 years. It’s not an old building. This has been an ongoing concern at the school for years.”

The replacement could cost millions of dollars, Lancia said, but would save money and time in the long run.

“It’s hard to do a cost-benefit analysis,” Mazjanis said, “but it’s so unreliable we had to cancel school, which we did not want to do. That’s unacceptable, and we are looking at a total revamp.” 

In early January, a boiler broke and a replacement was ordered. The second backup boiler failed the week of Jan. 19 before the new boiler arrived.

With no heat, the school was closed to students until Jan. 24. Classroom temperatures averaged 65 degrees, Lancia said, but many were far colder.

Public meetings held at the school over the week of Jan. 17 were uncomfortably cold. At a Planning Board meeting, members wore winter jackets as they conducted business, and other, later public meetings were held remotely.

The new boiler was installed Jan. 21 and cost $70,000, and the backup will need replacement soon, too, said School Director of Facilities Brandon Krupski. A boiler should last much longer than 12 years, he said, but they are being overtaxed by the failing heat pumps.

Krupski, who is working on a plan to replace the heating system, said the geothermal heat pumps have lasted about three years apiece. Each time one fails, it costs about $16,000 to replace it. On top of that, each pump has two compressors that cost about $12,000 to fix when they break. Pumps can also break down in ways that don’t cost money to repair but do cost time, he said.

He hasn’t run the numbers to see how much the school department has spent in total in the system’s repairs, but Krupski said he knows it is “unsustainable.”

“We are told to fix it when it breaks,” Krupski said. “I live here. I am a taxpayer, I don’t want to hear that. It’s not sustainable. We have to provide heat, we have to provide cooling. Obviously, there are costs with everything, but other systems may be less involved with fewer moving parts. Maybe additional boilers.”

While a boiler failure did lead to the middle school closure, the boilers are far more reliable than the pumps, and the boiler would have lasted longer had it not been overworked due to pump failures.

“When hot water temperatures (from the pumps) get too low, the boilers kick on to provide heat. That was the initial design,” Krupski said. “Over the years of unreliable pumps, they provide the lion’s share of the heat just due to unreliability on the heat pumps. They are capable of doing that, they were designed for that, but they do run more than intended and that does contribute to the decay.”

The geothermal system was chosen as part of the $34 million middle school construction project, approved by voters in 2007, because it was seen as environmentally sustainable. It was supposed to use less electricity and reduce oil costs, Lancia said.

Gorham’s middle school was the first public building in Maine to use a geothermal heating system, and its system has fared better.  However,  comparing Gorham’s system to Westbrook’s would be like “comparing apples to oranges,” Gorham Facilities Director Norm Justice said.

Westbrook’s pumps draw water over a thousand feet deeper into the ground, which also brings sediment and debris into the system, causing damage.

Gorham’s pump system recycles glycol, an organic chemical compound often used in anti-freeze, to heat or cool the building. In Gorham, the glycol is recycled through 130 wells that are only 150 feet deep in a controlled setting, according to Justice.

Gorham’s pumps have worked as intended and an upcoming $3.3 million revamp of the system was expected and planned for because the pumps have been in use for 18 years, Gorham Superintendent Heather Perry said.

“We’ve been very happy with our systems over time,” Perry said. “We are having to invest and replace stuff, but we are impressed with our systems and costs. In our two schools with heat pumps, they are our lowest energy consumers.”

Westbrook’s pumps have added more than expected to the middle school’s electric costs, Krupski said. It’s difficult to provide data on that because the school’s electric bill includes the pumps and everything else using electricity, but it’s clear the pumps use more power than they should when they strain and fail, he said.

Mazjanis said the whole situation is “a hard lesson learned.”

“We had really high hopes for this,” Mazjanis said. “We thought we were innovative but we weren’t. Gorham was already doing it, and it has not worked out for us.”

The potential replacement project will be discussed at a Feb. 14 meeting of the School Committee’s school facilities committee.

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