By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
In July, Barton County Commissioners and other officials met with the architects and engineers for a proposed heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system at the courthouse. The designs have yet to be returned from Orazem & Scalora Engineering (OSE), but a big project is looking even bigger as the courthouse will need to be vacated for several months during the upgrade.
"There's a lot of people working on this together," said County Director of Operations Matt Patzner. "We're going to use as many resources as we can to lean on for expertise - other counties that have been through this. I know Ellis County did something similar and we're kind of reaching out to them for best practices. There's no way around it. It's definitely going to be a headache."
The Barton County Courthouse is 104 years old, and there have been no major updates to the HVAC system since 1979. With the old system, there is little control of heat and air in the building.
"It's a two-pipe system," said Commissioner Kirby Krier. "You either have all the heat on for the entire building, or you have all cool. There's no in-between. We're not doing it just for the comfort of our employees, we're doing it for the fact we have a tremendous amount of leaks all the time."
Krier said the county has set aside $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funds for the project. The overhaul was originally supposed to be a tiered one, allowing employees from multiple floors to remain in the building while work was completed on another floor. That is no longer looking like an option.
"When they come in, the first thing they're going to do is take out all the original components," Patzner said. "So we won't have any heating and air, and possibly no water, in here for a while. That's really the only route we can go is to get everybody out all at once just because of the components they're going to have to take out from the get-go."
Patzner said the county hopes to have plans from OSE returned within a month. At that time, the county will seek bids for the project.