North Penn Pool Fix Prompts Deep Dive into Natatorium Repairs

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

North Penn celebrates after its 5-4 victory over Wilson in the Pennsylvania State Boys Water Polo Tournament final on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023 at North

A major fix has been added to the to-do list for North Penn High School.

Board members heard an update Monday night about the district’s long-term capital project list, including a repair at the high school that could cost upwards of seven figures.

"The North Penn High School natatorium pool pack replacement: the pool packs are two HVAC units up on the roof of the natatorium, that provide heat, air conditioning, and dehumidification to the pool area,” said Director of Facilities and Operations Tom Schneider.

"There are two units, two compressors on each unit, and we are down to 50 percent capacity — we just lost another compressor on the unit. They are at the end of their life — it’s not a repair that can be made,” he said.

For the past several years, staff and the board’s facilities and operations committee have discussed, compiled and updated a long-term capital project list, detailing equipment in need of repairs at all district buildings and facilities and ranking them by urgency, current condition, educational impact, and life expectancy.

In recent years the board has approved several transfers from year-end surplus in their operating budget to cover those capital upgrades — most recently, a $5 million transfer from the 2022-2023 budget surplus was approved in November — while planning a major renovation of North Penn High School that was the subject of a voter referendum in mid-January.

The latest update to that list was discussed by the school board’s facilities and operations committee January 29, as Schneider detailed two changes made since the prior version. The bigger-ticket item: an estimated $1.57 million repair for the natatorium pool pack, which Schneider said is essential to controlling the heat and humidity levels in the natatorium and the pool water. In addition to two compressors that have failed, an evaporator coil has begun to leak and outside contractors have been unable to find or fix it, the administrator said.

"They’re sophisticated pieces of equipment, that are really at the end of their life. They were in the second five years of the ten-year capital plan; I moved them up into the first five years, and increased the priority level,” Schneider said.

Items on the capital list are categorized on a scale of one to five for their safety, physical condition, educational impact, age, and original life expectancy, with those rankings then averaged into a total average score. The highest-rated unaddressed items on the capital list as of January are scored at four out of five and are all at the high school, including an estimated $49 million for HVAC system and piping repairs, $19.5 million for electric switch gear and panels, $7.8 million for HVAC controls, and $3.9 million for boilers.

Two other high school items are ranked 3.8 out of five on the list, including $7.8 million in roof repairs and a $56,000 replacement of a cafeteria water heater; items scored 3.6 out of five include $5.8 million for ‘exterior rehabilitation to the K-Pod bridge,” $2.9 million for high school chillers and water pumps, and $1 million for high school chiller condensing water systems, plus two natatorium items: a $48,000 repair to a pool water heater, and a $32,000 repair to a domestic water heater.

"We seem to spend a lot of money on the pool. Weren’t we going to spend $1 million in replacing the pool roof, and now another $1.5 million for these pumps?” said board President Tina Stoll.

The natatorium is named after longtime swim coach Rick Carroll, who led the school’s swim programs from 1971 to 1998 and was inducted into the district’s "Knights of Honor” in 2018. Since then, the board has approved a partial roof repair priced at $1 million that was discussed in February 2022 and approved later that summer, and a smaller boiler and valve repair below the pool that cost roughly $25,000 that same spring. Administrators had also cited issues with pool equipment during a series of public meetings ahead of the high school renovation referendum in mid-January, when voters vetoed a proposed expansion and reconfiguration of the high school complex to add ninth grade there.

"I know we need to do this, and we can’t not do it. But it’s a lot of money for the pool, and it really bothers me, so I just wanted to put that on record,” Stoll said.

Board member Juliane Ramic added a stat she heard discussed repeatedly during the high school renovation meetings: that the natatorium was finished in 2005, and equipment that was new at the time is now nearly 20 years old.

"Mr. Schneider is right, that things are at end of life, and I think it’s very similar in terms of construction decisions as K-Pod, and why we’re needing to pick this up,” she said, before thanking the Souderton, Hatboro-Horsham and Upper Dublin school districts for letting North Penn teams use their pools when needed.

Committee chair Cathy Wesley said she’s seen how the natatorium "gets tremendous use, all day long the community uses it,” and asked that staff help the board take a deeper dive.

"What I would like to formally ask, and that it be presented at this committee, is a life-cycle analysis of the pool: the components that are failing now, and then additionally the life cycle of maintaining the pool itself,” she said.

Other repairs or maintenance to the pool could be needed in the upcoming years, such as re-plastering and acid-washing the interior of the pool, or investigating whether the pool interior could be tiled instead, and those future projects could be studied at the same time as the rest of the high school renovations are planned and bid.

"What it would look like to do replacements of the components that are failing? And see what we can do for the long-term use of our pool, that is used every day,” she said, and Schneider said he’d discuss the pool with the district’s architect and engineer and report back with those specifics at a future facilities and ops committee meeting.

In addition to the natatorium repair, one new item was added to the capital list: a $75,000 door partition repair for Bridle Path Elementary School, rated at 3.6 out of five on the urgency scale. That partition separates the cafeteria from the gym at that school and comes off of its track, and has been repaired "numerous times.”

"This door gets opened frequently, because there is cross activities between the cafeteria and multipurpose room. Sometimes it’s open halfway, sometimes it’s open 100 percent; the difficulty is when it’s open halfway, which is most of the time, and the one panel is not secure and could be a problem,” Schneider said.

The estimated $75,000 price would be for a replacement door that opens manually, while an electronic motor could also be added depending on costs, and the bid could be added as an alternate option into a larger door upgrade and replacement project upgrading hardware across the district that the board authorized staff to bid out in December. No formal actions were taken on the door or pool repairs on Monday night, and the updated capital project list is included in the committee’s meeting materials packet for that night.

North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on Feb. 6 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street, and the facilities and operations committee next meets at 7 p.m. on Feb. 26 online. For more information visit www.NPenn.org.

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