The 1957 steam heat system at West Union Elementary School wasn’t long for this world. 

“We were one really cold day away from system failure,” said North Fayette Valley School District superintendent Joe Griffith. “If we popped a bunch of steam lines and had to shut the system down, we were going to be in big trouble.”

Steam heating systems eventually corrode the inside of pipes. “We started popping radiators,” Griffith said. “We started popping steam lines. We could just barely run them at idle, because there was just too much pressure.” Plus, the school lacked sufficient insulation. Its aluminum-clad plywood construction had such poor heat retention that grass grew around the edges of the building through the cold Iowa winters.

Griffith sat down with the school board for a “very frank” conversation. “If we had a system failure, we were not going to be able to function,” he said.

“We were able to heat most of the time, but frequently we were leaking steam,” Griffith said.

The school board decided to install a geothermal, or ground source heat pump, system that would heat West Union Elementary and also provide air conditioning for the first time to the district’s youngest students.

Their timing couldn’t have been better. The new heat pumps started operating at West Union Elementary in August of 2023, allowing the district to be one of the first in the country to file for an IRS tax reimbursement known as direct or elective pay. “The timing is purely accidental, but it was very convenient,” Griffith said.

The school district received a check for $873,483, a significant portion of the approximately $4-million project. Because the project had been planned without the federal reimbursement, North Fayette Valley is able to use this money to fund a laundry list of needed repairs and facilities upgrades.

“The district is replacing some windows at the middle school,” Griffith said. “In addition, an AC unit at the middle school was replaced, and some sidewalk here at the high school was a trip hazard. Restrooms on the visitor side of our athletic complex and ensuring the visitor side of our athletic complex is accessible to people with disabilities were two other priorities.

“Replacing a compressor in the middle school in their HVAC system, and sealcoating a section of the parking lot at our middle school, and replacing curtain walls in the front of our high school. We did some upgrades to our gym that were code-mandated for safety purposes,” according to Griffith.

All of this work in the summer of 2025 will use only about half of the federal tax reimbursement, leaving the rest for future needs.

Geothermal heating and cooling might be new technology for some school districts, but it is a known strategy in West Union, where the Iowa prairie meets the Driftless bluffs and the ground is particularly conducive to heat transfer technology.

More than 10 years ago, the town of West Union completed geothermal loops centered at the courthouse that heat and cool much of the downtown. It was one of the first municipalities in the country to install a geothermal district.

Griffith emphasized that the school district chose this ground-source HVAC system because it makes the most sense for the bottom line. “When I did the math on ground source, it was worth doing. We were going to be cooling a building that I knew was inefficient, and as a result of that, I wanted to make sure that I had the most efficient system.”

North Fayette Valley High School already has a geothermal loop under its baseball field to cool the high school’s performing arts center. It’s large enough that Griffith hopes to tap into it in the next three to five years for a similar HVAC project at the high school.

“Schools need to be responsible to the taxpayers,” Griffith said. “From a district financial standpoint, I hope to build something that provides sustainable savings.”