By MATT LINDSEY

NORWOOD -- Norwood-Norfolk Central will begin work this summer to replace their outdated half-century old heating system.

Meanwhile, plans are on hold to upgrade the parking lot at the school, due to increases in costs, high contractor demand and delays in project approvals from the state Education Department, said NNCS Superintendent Jamie Cruikshank.

“I am disappointed that we can’t fit all the work in, but things like this aren’t uncommon,” Cruickshank said.

The heating system replacement and parking lot upgrades are part of a $13.5 million capital project which was approved by voters in the summer of 2014.

Heating System Replacement

“The heating system is original to the building…and although our maintenance workers have taken great care of it and replaced parts, it is time to replace it.

The heating system, which was built in the 1950s, is not efficient, Cruickshank said.

“We’ve lost control of some of the rooms,” he said.

Cruickshank said there are rooms with no control of heat and that many hours are spent manually adjusting boilers either on or off to keep maintain temperatures.

Parts have been added on over the years to the heating system, during additions like the junior high and elementary wings, but sometimes those parts don't work well with an older system, he said.

School officials have met with Burns Brothers, who won the bid to do the work, and will lay out a schedule of work set to begin this summer.

“It will be done over two summers, because if anything went wrong we would not want to be without heat this fall, say in November,” Cruickshank said.

The bulk of the work this summer will be putting the new system into place, and the project will be completed next summer, Cruickshank said.

“The heating system has always been the primary focus,” he said.

Parking Lot Work Delayed

Cruickshank says work on the parking lot being delayed has several factors; all boiling down to the state Education Department.

In order to begin work on the parking lot, everything has to be up to par on what the Education department wants, he said.

Right now, the parking lot is a huge, open parking lot. The work to be done in the parking lot would separate school buses from public vehicles via a buffer creating a bus loop in front of the building.

Bids on the overall project came in 25 percent higher than anticipated, Cruickshank said.

“Because of that, we basically had a choice to do most of all of the work, and not finish anything, or do something complete and address the heating system…which has been our primary focus,” he said.

The Education Department took a lot longer than usual in approving the project, leading to increases in costs and timing issues.

By the time the school could solicit bids for work, contactors already had work lined up. Projects for many schools were approved at the same by the Education Department, and that drove the demand for contractors up, increasing the cost of the work, he said.

Cruickshank was not sure when the parking lot would be addressed, but said that they are in preliminary stages and are working on a five-year plan.

Other work this summer includes replacing a grease trap in the kitchen, addressing some plumbing issues, asbestos removal, lighting and sounding in the auditorium and coding concerns.