The boiler at the Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre in Owen Sound will be replaced starting in the spring.
City council gave unanimous pre-budget approval on Monday night to a recommendation by environmental superintendent Chris Hughes.
He says they need to replace the facility’s original 1983 boiler and do other energy upgrades that will help save the city more than 10 thousand dollars per year.
Pre-budget approval was needed so the tender documents can be issued by the end of this month and installation deadlines later this year can be met.
Owen Sound’s budget for 2011 will not be approved until March.
But the expected cost of the work — which is an estimated 150 thousand dollars with HST — will not affect the city’s bottom line.
It will be debentured and paid off over a 10-year period.
The old boiler costs 3 to 5 thousand dollars in annual maintenance and was originally scheduled to be replaced in 2008.
But the city decided to wait until the completion of an energy audit which began that year.
The audit recommended the replacement of the boiler with two new high-efficiency condensing boilers.
The report by Hughes says these new boilers will qualify for Union Gas energy initiatives worth 48 hundred dollars.
Another piece of equipment will be installed to recover some of the waste heat from the ice-making equipment and use it to pre-heat the water going to those boilers.
The waste heat is currently vented to the outside of the building.
Two new hot water heaters will also be installed for the ice-resurfacing system.
An exchanger in one of those heaters will take the place of the existing domestic hot water system, which also needed to be replaced.
The report says the total annual energy savings are expected to be in excess of 10 thousand dollars ($10,500).
That will help to retire the debentures that will pay for the necessary work, which Hughes says will be done between May and July of this year.
