Old Plains gymnasium gets new furnace

Two years of designing and planning came to fruition this past Thursday. Phil Oyen, project manager from Garden City Plumbing and Heating based out of Missoula, oversaw the installation of the new heating system for the old Plains School gymnasium.

Scheduled to be fully installed by Feb. 21, at the cost of $150,000, the new system will provide both heating and cooling. Superintendent Thom Chisholm said that the new heating unit replaces the old system that was installed when the gym was built in 1974 and stopped working in the early 1980s.

Chisholm said that without a working heating system the air temperature in the gym would drop down to the 30s and 40s during wintertime.

New ducting was installed during the Thanksgiving break last year. The new rooftop unit will also include a fire control system.

Chisholm nervously watched crane operator Kody Bullman from D&G Crane out of Missoula gently lift the 2,500-pound heating unit off the delivery truck, placing it on the roof of the gymnasium.

He said that the system installed took 40 weeks for the manufacture to produce and that didn’t include the frustration of finding a trucking company to deliver it to Montana.