Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 17, 1994 TAG: 9401170101
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For 25 years, Cline, the building manager, has been stoking the coal-fired boiler that heats the Wasena classrooms. Every winter school-day morning, every afternoon. One hundred fifty pounds of coal. Three times a day.
When the temperature drops below 25 degrees - even if it's during the weekend - Cline climbs out of bed, catches the bus, descends into the dusty boiler room and reaches for his shovel. He mustn't allow the school's pipes to freeze.
In April, Cline will put away his shovel for good.
Wasena, one of five remaining coal-heated schools in the city, will be renovated this summer. The coal-fired boiler will be pulled out and replaced with a gas-fired rooftop heating and cooling system similar to a heat pump.
And when the school reopens in the fall of 1995, Cline will be replaced.
"When they close a school for renovation, the building manager has to float from place to place, and I don't want to do that," he said. So, at age 45, he'll retire.
Little by little, so will the coal-fired heating systems in Roanoke schools. After Wasena, the city will begin to renovate its middle schools. Two coal-fired boilers at Woodrow Wilson will go. The ones at Addison Aerospace, too.
Within five years, said Maintenance Service Coordinator Gary Blankenship, the boilers at Breckinridge Middle and Huff Lane Elementary also should be replaced.
The old heating systems may be cheaper to fuel, but they cost a lot to maintain and often belch soot into the air, he said.
"We don't want to end up with L.A. smog."
Roanoke installed coal-fired heating systems in all its schools until the 1960s, said Blankenship, when it switched to electric heat. Most schools now are heated with gas-fired systems, like the one that will go into Wasena.
A few coal-heated schools remain in other parts of the Roanoke Valley, but school officials say the trend has been to replace them with gas or electric heating systems as they modernize their buildings.
The gas systems cost slightly more to operate than the coal systems, Blankenship said. But they also provide air conditioning, which the coal-heated schools don't.
The cost to heat Wasena with coal - not including labor or maintenance - is $39 per day, he said. The gas system will cost $69 per day. But the new system won't require constant supervision the way the old one does, saving $14 spent daily on labor and materials.
The gas heat also will be cleaner than coal, Cline said.
"It's a good source of heat, but it's dirty. You get a lot of dust in the classrooms."
Cline said he's careful not to send too much dust and soot into the neighborhood by keeping the boiler in good working order and by not stoking the fire too often.
"If you know what you're doing and watch what you're doing, it's not bad," he said.
Over the years, Cline watched the mound of coal stored in the school's basement shrink from two boxcar loads - nearly 200 tons - to about 15 tons now. He's never had a health problem because of it, he said, despite having to wash away the dust and soot that build on the floors every two or three days.
Cline won't miss the shoveling, he said. But he will miss the children at Wasena.
The career custodian lives alone and looks forward to seeing them every day when he cleans the classrooms or helps set up for lunch. He's not sure what he'll do next year without 230 children to keep warm.
"As of right now, I don't have any plans," he said.
by CNB