Northampton and Westhampton have been awarded Green Communities competitive grants that they plan to put toward enhancing the energy efficiency of school buildings.
Northampton was awarded $494,613 to fund energy recovery ventilators (ERVs), ERV controls and a heat pump system at Leeds Elementary School, and Westhampton was awarded $90,326 for weatherization and insulation improvements at Westhampton Elementary School.
These awards come as part of a $7.2 million package awarded by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, distributed to 42 communities across the state for clean energy projects.
At Leeds Elementary, the grant will aid in larger efforts to decarbonize the school’s energy usage, while also updating dated infrastructure in the school’s two wings — built in the 1950s and 1990s, said Ben Weil, the city’s Climate Action and Project Administration director.
This summer, ERVs will replace dated unit ventilators throughout the school, with an ERV and a heat pump going into each classroom and four heat pumps and a large ERV being installed in the school’s larger “cafetorium” space.
Also this summer, the school’s old boilers will be disassembled and replaced with a new, high efficiency boiler system that the city already had available in another building. The replacement of the boiler, Weil said, is something the city is “sort of covering on its own.”
“The 1950s wing will be fully electrified and much more efficient,” Weil said.
At the end of the project, Weil said the city will not only be saving approximately $23,000 per year, but will also cut gas use in half and reduce carbon emissions by two-thirds.
Later, the city plans to add cooling and electrified heating in the 1990s wing as well.
Weil said that these upgrades are “way overdue” even though they “cost a pretty penny.” Not including the future 1990s wing work, the entirety of the project is expected to cost just under $1 million, but Weil explained that “a grant this size is a big contribution.” Ultimately, the city expects to contribute roughly 35% of the total cost.
Weil expects these upgrades to make the school’s systems for heating, cooling and fresh air more reliable, hopefully eliminating the times when students are sitting in an overheated classroom in the winter or when a room is pulling in an excess of fresh air despite nobody using it at the time. The ERVs will also cool air in the classrooms, which historically have not needed their own air conditioning but have been heating up in the summer months as the climate warms.
In Westhampton, the majority of the grant money will go toward improving insulation and making Westhampton Elementary easier to heat.
“In essence, there’s insulation gaps at the top of every wall where the walls meet the ceiling,” said Town Coordinator Douglas Finn. Closing the insulation gaps at that roof and wall joint is expected to save the town money on heating the building in the long-run.
Other weatherization measures the grant will help fund for the school will include improvements to windows and weather stripping on external doors, but Finn said that the “bulk of the work is the wall to roof connection.”
“It is part of an ongoing process that we are pursuing in Westhampton to make buildings more efficient,” Finn explained, adding that the town is also trying to use renewable energy wherever it can.
For example, Finn said the town is preparing to install solar panels on the roof of Town Hall this spring — which he hopes to have up and running by July — and is also currently accepting bids for solar power at the public safety complex.
Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com.