Hot dogs no more. St. Joseph County Humane Society repairs weeklong A/C unit failure

MISHAWAKA — This past week, issues with an air conditioning unit at the Humane Society of St. Joseph County headquarters lent new meaning to the term "hot dog."

Although repairs completed Thursday night at the Grape Road shelter appear to be holding, the executive director of the Humane Society says the 13-year-old facility is beginning to show its age.

Genny Brown, director, said the shelter's largest air conditioning unit began to fail prior to the Memorial Day weekend in the area where the adoption dogs and the cat intake wards are located.

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"When it started becoming warmer, we were noticing that the A/C was not keeping up," Brown said. "And that's very concerning, because if the A/C is not keeping up, it can put the animals in danger."

Brown showed the wall in her office where the nine thermostats exist for the various HVAC units in the facility.

A mechanical company that works with the shelter called in to fix the unit noticed a hole and recharged the unit with refrigerant, but, Brown said, the fix lasted only "a few hours," meaning that there was still a leak in the system.

After a re-check, Brown said, the unit was found to have more problems. The shelter then took steps by renting a portable air conditioning unit from Fort Wayne at a cost of $770 per week to keep the wards tolerable until they could come up with a solution.

The cats in the effected ward were moved to some empty areas in other wards. The dogs, however, did not have many places to go, other than to be adopted out or to go into foster care.

"When it was getting warmer before that mobile unit came up, we kept the doors to the other areas open, and had fans on, making sure the dogs had plenty of water and giving them ice and those sorts of things," Brown said. "But now I feel we are out of the danger zone now, so that's good. And, hopefully, this is the last of the issues for the summer."

Not ordinary cooling units

HVAC units for animal shelters are specialized units that have to handle a more sophisticated air cleaning system while also having coated components that resist the moisture and chemical exposures prevalent in these areas, Bown explained.

For example, unlike a home air-conditioning and heating system that circulates air, units at animal shelters take outside air and heat or cool it for use in the building.

Brown said the units then take the air and filter out contaminants to control the spread of diseases.

"You think of your A/C at home and you have to replace the filters, that sort of thing," Brown said. "But imagine having upwards of 500 animals in your facility — all the chemicals, the water, the dander, all sorts of things in the air. They do a beating on these HVAC units."

These units are so specialized, she contended, that they are hard to acquire because they are not mass-produced.

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There was a pause in manufacturing of these units, Brown said. "We have been working with our maintenance company on getting quotes and trying to make plans for this particular unit that went down," the director said. "The last quote I received was that they weren't even manufacturing that unit right now because of COVID and other things that were going on at the time. So we're trying to come up with Plan B."

Community support

But Brown said the community support and donations during the cooling crisis have been welcome and appreciated.

So far, the society has received more than $5,000 in donations, Brown said Friday, and although not all the bills have come in for this recent incident, she said that the money collected is going to go to pay off the current bills for the air conditioning incident with excess going into the long-term building and maintenance fund for future repairs and needs.

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Local individuals and businesses have been offering in-kind and other means of support, and Brown wanted to thank them.

"I've had calls from people who are wanting to donate or have extra equipment at their homes or businesses wondering if it could help us here," Brown said. "And, like I said, any funds that we do raise that are in excess of what this bill is going to be for this particular situation is going to help cover future maintenance costs that we're going to incur on our building and HVAC units."

To donate:

To donate and to keep track of updates, go to the Humane Society of St. Joseph County Facebook page: facebook.com/HSSJC or to the agency's website: humanesocietystjc.org.

Email Tribune staff writer Greg Swiercz at gswiercz@sbtinfo.com.