Air Conditioning to Replace Old Boiler at Kanab High School

Kanab High School is finally going to have air conditioning, thanks to a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Kanab was selected from a pool of over 1,000 applicants across the U.S. to receive the Renew America’s Schools Grant. Previously the school has had no air conditioning and has been using the same coal-fired boiler system to heat the school since it was built in the 1980s.

Through the grant, Kanab High School will receive $5.7 million in funds to remove the boiler and install a high-efficiency rooftop HVAC system that will provide cooling to every room of the school.

“We have an outdated coal boiler that is at Kanab High School, (and) we’d like to remove that boiler to provide a more accommodating learning environment for our students and also provide air conditioning,” Ben Dalton, superintendent of Kane County School District, told ksl.

Air Conditioning in Schools

Air conditioning has been moving through schools in the past few years, and it has been accelerated by concerns over last year’s heat wave. But there is still no official mandate for air conditioning in schools, and in 2022 Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder, estimated that about 40% of the schools in the U.S. have air conditioning.

Both Escalante and Bryce Valley High School installed or updated their air conditioning in 2021.

Not only will Kanab’s new system keep the students cooler in a very hot Kane County September, it will also be more efficient at heating and cooling rooms, since the temperature can be adjusted for rooms that are unoccupied.

The project does not have a timeline yet, but district officials are meeting with the U.S. Department of Energy on July 20 to decide the details. Regardless of the timing of the project, it will be a lot faster than what would have been plausible for the school at this point.

– The Byway

Feature image caption: Kanab High School will receive air conditioning and a completely new HVAC system to replace the old boiler it has been using since it was built in the 80s. Courtesy KUTV.