Helicopter to lift AC units on top of Stephenville schools Saturday

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By BRAD KEITH

TheFlashToday.com

STEPHENVILLE (July 13, 2016) — For much of Saturday morning a helicopter will be hovering over Stephenville, but don’t be alarmed.

Stephenville ISD will have new heat/AC units installed at Stephenville High School, Henderson Junior High and Chamberlain Elementary School. There are 73 units in all, 60 of them at SHS. HJH has seven units being replaced, while Chamberlain has six.

Stephenville ISD Maintenance Director Keith Starnes expects the work to begin about 8 a.m. and to be completed by mid-day.

“They expect it to take about two minutes per unit, plus time to move between campuses and get re-situated,” Starnes said. “I don’t know if they will get it done that quick or not, but the units and everything will already be set out and ready and they will have crews of four or five guys on the roof and four or five more on the ground. They say it’s just a matter of hooking and unhooking it each time.”

Woods Air Conditioning out of Mt. Pleasant, Texas is in charge of the AC work, but Starnes noted that Rutledge Electric, a Stephenville contractor, is handling all the electrical work.


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Thanks to the violent storms of May, 2015 and the flooding earlier this year, it’s a busier than normal summer for Starnes and the maintenance staff.

“We’ve got a ton of roofing going on, but all the roofing will be completed before school starts. We originally gave them a deadline of August 1, and the majority of the work will be done by then, but they will still be finishing up some stuff,” he said. “On top of that we’ve got our regular summer maintenance, but the roofing and the ACs are the biggest things going on.”

As for Saturday, Starnes joked about the helicopter being overhead.

“I promise it’s not the aliens coming,” he said. “I imagine if they could get all the way here they wouldn’t need a helicopter, they could use their own ship.”

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