As school districts develop their capital plans for coming years, officials can’t ignore the need to update aging heating and cooling systems. An inefficient HVAC system can burn through 30 percent of a school facility’s energy costs over the course of a year. Meanwhile, students can suffer from discomfort, noise and poor air quality.

Meeting School Facility Needs

Modine is dedicated to providing economical and efficient commercial HVAC solutions for schools, including the ClassMate® packaged DX Cooling and Heat Pump units. Featuring a sound-deadening compressor acoustic wrap to reduce operating noises, the ClassMate also incorporates advanced blower and compressor technologies. They can be shut off when classrooms are unoccupied, maximizing energy savings over large whole-school units.

Other features include:

• EC fans to modulate airflow to adapt to changing load conditions. 
• Lower fan speeds for low load conditions reduce energy consumption. 
• Economizer dampers allowing up to 100% free-cooling during favorable weather.
• Can use an energy recovery wheel to precondition the outside air, lowering energy costs. 
• Offers a small footprint and is the quietest single packaged product of its type.

Ventilation Needs

One underestimated health issue facing students around the country is the lack of proper ventilation in classrooms. A recently study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, estimates that 85 percent of classrooms in California are under-ventilated, which can have a negative impact on student performance, according to The Sacramento Bee:

“We were able to find in that study that classrooms that were better ventilated tend to have lower illness absentee rates, and that’s very significant,”

said Rengie Chan, a research scientist at the Berkeley lab.

“As kids miss school more, they fall behind, and so it’s really associated with the learning of students.”

Modine offers HVAC applications such as the Sentinel® Vertical Unit Ventilator to improve indoor air quality in classrooms. The unit operates in conjunction with a school’s central chiller/boiler plant and is available in five nominal sizes. It is specifically designed to provide the proper amount of fresh air ventilation, and to enable schools to minimize their energy consumption.