Caged-in Complex

Imagine a dentist telling you an extreme procedure must be done on your teeth. Now imagine a dentist saying that your mouth isn’t shaped right to place bridges, crowns and posts in the right places. The entire mouth — maybe even the entire lower half of your face — might need to be replaced.

That’s the picture Newton Community School District leaders paint in terms of the aging B.C. Berg Complex, which is home to hundreds of students at its kindergarten through third-grade elementary side and its seventh and eighth-grade middle school.

In order for the elementary/middle-school complex to get the upgrades it needs in its electrical, computer, heating and cooling and plumbing systems, the building(s) will need to have their foundations torn out in a major renovation or be rebuilt as an all-new structure or structures. The district’s board voted last week on an option to pursue a bond issue on an all-new building, which would be built next to the current structure.

While all of the financing details haven’t been worked out, it will be an expensive replacement, with an initial estimate of more than $30 million. Named after Brian Conrad Berg, who served as district superintendent from 1922 to 1959, the complex was dedicated on Dec. 8, 1963.

It’s built with some of the standard design and, perhaps, using some of the shortcuts typical for buildings from that era. Some of the initial design didn’t leave room for growth or replacement of systems. Some of the improvements through the years either taxed the existing grids even more, requiring “band-aid” fixes like condensers and circuit breaker splits.

Newton Superintendent Bob Callaghan and Maintenance Supervisor Jack Suttek recently took the Daily News on a tour of the Berg Complex, looking mainly at the buildings’ most aged and stressed systems and locations.

Callaghan said many school administrators operate under this guideline: If a renovation costs more than 50 percent of a new build, it’s better to build new and get all the warranties and modern technology.

Callaghan assures parents and teachers that no one is exposed to asbestos that is a part of the depths of the walls of Berg in school-use areas. But a large-scale renovation might be a different story.

The superintendent presented an estimated $17.8 million renovation alternative to his $30.6 million new-build plan. He and several board members said they want to present a comprehensive, detailed plan to the public in the weeks and months ahead, to see if people really want all the features in the initial plan.

Regardless of whether the district and its voting public approve a bond, a major change to the Berg Complex will need to happen at some point.

“It isn’t just that the building is incredibly inefficient,” Suttek said. “It’s that it can’t be improved without tearing apart the building.”

Electrical

Suttek said his training in electrical systems didn’t even cover the ancient wiring, conduits, breakers and designs found in the Berg Complex. The electrical grid might be the smallest problem with the complex, compared to heating, cooling and plumbing. However, there are still miles and miles of old wires.

Blueprints and diagrams, when available, aren’t always helpful in telling what’s where after 52 years worth of repair and renovations. One portion of a room off of the boiler room shows dozens of cords and cord clusters, covered in dust and held together with bands.

A major building addition in 1999 brought several classrooms and a new gymnasium onto an already-burdened electrical grid. And that was before power-sapping computers, chargers and other technology were hogging the 1960s outlets in Berg classrooms. Problems with heating and cooling add to the electrical issues, as portable fans and heaters add to the drain on the supply of electricity.

Lighting fixtures in the building are of an older design. Those could be replaced as a stand-alone project, but it would be an unusual move to install hundreds of new, heavy, high-wattage ballasts in a structure with wiring put in when John F. Kennedy was president.

Callaghan said he’s been told at least some of the Berg hardware was purchased from a company that was going out of business. That would mean technology used to build Berg might not even be up to 1963 standards.

Much of the hardware is extremely old as well. One circuit breaker not only has three circuits split in half to serve more outlets. The breaker was manufactured by the Frank Adam Electric Company out of St. Louis.

“When I started learning about circuit breakers, years ago, I was told most of the Frank Adam breakers had been phased out,” Suttek said.

Plumbing and boilers

One of the two Berg boilers was replaced within the past five years. It’s much more efficient than the older “brother” next to it, but it’s still being used in a building with old plumbing. Recent school board meetings have included discussion about plumbing issues at the complex, such as water temperatures and leaking.

Classroom space

One area in which administrators have limited options at Berg is in interior remodeling to meet district needs. Some classrooms have zero natural light, and others, which open into the library or another classroom, let in too much side noise. Few, if any, of the Berg classrooms are close to the ideal 950 square feet — which Callaghan says is the approximate size of the current conference room of the Emerson Hough building.

Heating and cooling

When a 1973 tornado tore the roof back on the Berg building, it was eventually repaired. But it would have been quite a job to re-do the main building in a way that would have provided more room for duct work between the ceilings and the roof.

“There is only about eight to 10 inches of space between the ceiling and roof,” Callaghan said. “And that’s for everything — duct work, electrical, plumbing, gas, Internet, phone — all of it.”

The biggest issue with the antiquated heating and cooling, ventilation and cooling system, however, isn’t the fact there is almost no room to run duct work overhead. It’s the sheer length of the current system, and how the ancient boiler and heater must reach an entire half of the complex.

“It’s like if you were drying your hair with a blow dryer,” Suttek said. “It feels real hot right next to the metal, but much cooler a foot or two away. Stand in this classroom, a few feet from the heat source, and it’s too warm — we need fans to cool the room. Stand in this one, at the end of the line, and feel the tiny amount of air coming out, and notice we need another heater in the room.”

The same problem exists with the air conditioning. However, Suttek said the district insisted on installing a unit that could be moved into a new building, so it isn’t “married” to a structure that could be demolished in a few years.

Tiny vents in the floor and hallway radiators are signs of ventilation system designed when the U.S. was still figuring out how to put a man on the moon. The biggest problem with Berg might be yet to come — and it might lie beneath those vents.

“The metals used then are not the most corrosion-resistant,” Suttek said. “Some of the ducts under the building might be at least partially collapsed; we don’t know. If those ducts collapse completely, the only way to get at them is to dig up the foundation — you can imagine how big a project that could become.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com