County Keeping Cool

New Air Conditioning Unit Installed Saturday

Sean DePeel, left, with Barbee Equipment and John Doyle with Action Mechanical help Saturday guide a heating, ventilation and air conditioning unit to the rooftop of the Benton County Administration Building in Bentonville.
Sean DePeel, left, with Barbee Equipment and John Doyle with Action Mechanical help Saturday guide a heating, ventilation and air conditioning unit to the rooftop of the Benton County Administration Building in Bentonville.

— The heat of summer may have faded into memory, but Benton County is working to keep things cool for years to come.

A new roof-top air conditioning unit was installed at the County Administration Building on Saturday, replacing the 17-year-old unit that has served since the building opened.

At A Glance

Cold Cash

Benton County is paying $211,000 to replace the rooftop air conditioning unit on the County Administration Building. The current unit has been in use for 17 years. John Sudduth, county director of facilities and construction, said he is working on a report evaluating the status of the heating and cooling systems in all of the county’s buildings that will include a recommended maintenance and replacement schedule.

Source: Staff Report

John Sudduth, county director of facilities and construction, said the present unit, in use since 1995, has been wearing out and breaking down at a troubling rate.

“It’s failed at least 20 times,” Sudduth said. “This past summer we had trouble with it almost daily.”

Paul Webberson, county maintenance technician, said the unit has 12 cooling fans, and 10 of them have gone out and been replaced in the last seven years, at a cost of up to $1,270 for a single fan replacement. Two compressors also have failed, with each of those carrying a price tag of about $8,300. A pair of 40-horsepower motors also have malfunctioned, forcing the county to rebuild one.

Sudduth said this past year was difficult because the county decided not to repair one of the compressors, trying to get through the heat of the summer with the one remaining compressor.

“We were limping by because we did not spend the money to repair the second compressor,” Sudduth said. “We simply had too much money involved. It would’ve been about $14,000 to fix it.”

With a single compressor operating, Sudduth said, other problems were magnified. On several occasions, the building was without air conditioning. County offices remained open, but officials and staff scrambled to keep cool.

“We had to go buy some fans because there’s no way to get any air in here,” county comptroller Sarah Daniels said of the accounting offices on the third floor. “It’s suffocating in here.”

County Clerk Tena O’Brien said her office on the second floor was hot, especially when the air conditioning failed during elections, but work continued with doors propped open and bought or borrowed fans blowing air through the office and hallways.

“It seemed like every election, when we had crowds of people, the AC went out,” O’Brien said. “We just tried to move the people through as quickly as we could. We closed the blinds to keep the sun out and opened the doors.”

Sudduth said the new air-conditioner is a 130-ton unit, which refers to the cooling capacity of the unit. Webberson said the unit weighs about 15,000 pounds. The old unit was lifted off the roof and the replacement hoisted up from a trailer in the east parking lot to the roof. The units are from the same manufacturer, he said, and the replacement should fit into the same space as the old unit and all of the connections should plug right in. Once the device is in place and running, Sudduth said, an engineer hired by the county will re-calibrate the system. Sudduth said the new unit is actually lighter and with more modern technology should cost the county less money to operate. Webberson said the system offers the county the ability to control the temperature in each of the different zones of the building by computer from a remote location.

“We can even do it off our iPhones,” Sudduth said.

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