On August 26, the Village of Ellenville Board of Trustees passed motions for a total of $19,773 for emergency repairs to the HVAC system at Village Hall, 2 Elting Court. Afterwards, Mayor Trent discussed the issues involved.

“The system here is very old. In fact, it is all original equipment, as old as the building itself.”

The building dates back to 1990, so that means 34 years of operation for the formidable old system. HVAC engineers generally regard any system more than 20 years old as being in need of replacement. Part of the reason is that technology has advanced dramatically for so many aspects of those systems, which means everything from difficulty finding replacement parts on older models to high power usage.

Trent went to describe the system in place. “It is huge,” he said in a slightly awed tone. “The unit on the roof actually shakes the building when it’s running.”

The system had serious problems over the summer when one of the two condensers stopped working and the other was limping along. At one point it was 94 degrees inside the building, and staff were wondering if they should go to a cooling center.

The system is from Trane, a well-known air conditioning firm. Some years ago, the village asked them to come and examine the system. They brought their diagnostic tools but found the system was simply too old to even plug the tools into. Think of the current HVAC system as equivalent to a DOS computer system, something that nobody under 30 would even recognize.

It would likely run between $125,000 and $150,000 to replace the entire system, according to a former village building inspector. Thats is a lot for the village, especially in its current fiscal straits, but with bills for repairs running to nearly $20,000, perhaps it’s simply time for a replacement.

Mayor Trent said that’s something his office is looking into. Until then, there’s little to do but hope for temperate weather.