Fr. Hien's Weekly Letter

NEW HEATING AND COOLING SYSTEM FOR OUR SCHOOL
My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 
The parish’s Pastoral Council with the Finance Committee and I have met, and we have decided to move forward with rooftop units for the entire school and gym, due to the old boiler system having failed.  Sadly, we have spent about $70 thousand on the old system, and we would need to spend an additional $40-50 thousand to fix 3 additional major problems, and maybe it would start to work again.  It’s a maybe.  The unfixable problem is that the system is old, and we have failed to treat the system with chemicals for decades (no one to blame and it would cost about three thousand dollars annually to treat it); therefore, all the pipes are affected, and some are rusting through, including newly installed pipes, and/or all pipes are clogged throughout the school.  With these problems, most of the classrooms have not had sufficient heating or cooling for decades; it was terrible last winter, and we ended the winter with no heat.  Besides, there are still many original underground pipes that have not been replaced; therefore, they can start breaking anytime and they are located under the children’s playground.  With the current old system, we can anticipate constant problems, costly to fix and difficult to order parts (about $110-$130 an hour for labor and very limited professionals can work on it).  
The total cost for the new rooftop project is between $620-$723 thousand.  It breaks down to about $170-250k for electrical (including the replacement of a dozen old panels and wires), and about $475k for the engineers, new gas line, 27 HVAC units ranging from 3 to 7.5 tons (about 100 tons total), and the installations.  For the time being, please pray for our church and school, including for myself that the project we are about to begin will go well according to God’s will.  Yes, we do have the approval from the diocese to start the project.  I will surely keep you posted, and love you all, Fr. Hien